It’s the scenario every military strategist in Europe fears but never dared voice – until Nato secretary general Mark Rutte spelled it out.
‘Let’s not be naive,’ the former Dutch prime minister and head of the West’s Armed Forces told the New York Times recently.
‘If China’s president Xi Jinping wants to attack Taiwan, he would first make sure that he makes a call to his very junior partner in all of this, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, residing in Moscow, and tells him: “Hey, I’m going to do this, and I need you to keep them busy in Europe by attacking Nato territory.” That is most likely the way this will progress.’
Blood will be boiling in the Kremlin over that dismissive put-down of Putin as Beijing’s ‘very junior partner’ but it is an accurate summary.
Russia, desperate for financial and military backing in its prolonged war against Ukraine, could benefit in multiple ways by acting as China’s attack dog – exposing the weakness of Nato and the unwillingness of the US under Donald Trump to intervene.
But Trump’s stay in office effectively ends in 2028. And, by then, Europe’s belated rearmament – and plans, announced last month, for a 30-mile-deep ribbon of defences along the border between Russia and the Baltic states – will be underway, boosting our defensive capabilities.
So, the potential prizes for Xi and Putin of a surprise attack on the West are immense. But to take advantage, they will have to act soon. We stand on the brink of a cataclysmic conflict between superpowers on two fronts – the very definition of a world war. This is how it could unfold…
Monday, November 3, 2025
12 NOON GMT: (2pm in the Baltic states) A massive power outage across Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, shuts down the city’s essential services. As hospitals switch to emergency generators and banks suspend trading, chaos spreads. A wave of looting and civil unrest breaks out, wholly unexpected in law-abiding Lithuania.
General Sir Richard Shirreff is the former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe for Nato
12.11: Localised power cuts are reported across Latvia and Estonia, as well as Lithuania. All three Baltic states have been hit by the unexplained electricity failure, though Vilnius is the only city to lose all supply.
15.16: As dusk approaches, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda announces martial law has been imposed in the capital, in response to rioting and violence. Troops join armed police on the streets. Early reports indicate most of those being arrested are not Lithuanian nationals but agitators from neighbouring Belarus.
16.30: Energy minister Dainius Kreivys warns the blackout has been triggered by a malware attack on the national grid, which switched over from the Soviet-era BRELL system to the European Union network in February this year. To minimise the spread of viruses, apparently embedded via Lithuania’s legacy electrical infrastructure, the Baltic states have been isolated from the EU grid. Kreivys is unable to deny reports that the outages could last for days.
18.15: Amid mounting unrest, Nauseda announces an immediate curfew. In Estonia, President Alar Karis follows suit. Sweden and Poland have offered to ship back-up generators to the Baltics but these will not be online for at least 36 hours.
20.20: Glitches in the power supply in the UK, France and Germany cause ripples of panic. Armed police increase patrols in most European countries. In Britain, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer makes a televised appeal for calm, insisting our national grid is secure and pleading with the public to ignore waves of disinformation on social media.
November 4
07.00 GMT: Russian President Vladimir Putin announces that, owing to unrest in the surrounding nations, troops in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad are being placed on full alert and moved to the border with Lithuania. Two full armoured divisions and a mechanised infantry division in Belarus – well over 60,000 soldiers – are also being mobilised. Another tank division has been hovering on the eastern border of Estonia for months, supposedly in preparation for action in Ukraine.
08.10: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attempts to put an urgent call in to the Kremlin. Unable to speak to Putin, she warns his foreign minister Sergey Lavrov that no military incursion into Lithuania, on any pretext, will be tolerated. Lavrov retorts that Russian-speaking residents in Vilnius are being targeted by nationalist mobs and that Moscow will not abandon them.
11.35: A skirmish breaks out on the banks of Lake Vistytis, close to where Lithuania borders both Poland and Kaliningrad. This is the northern end of the Suwalki Gap, a 65-mile stretch of bottleneck that is the only land border between the three Baltic states and the rest of the EU.
‘If China ’s president Xi Jinping wants to attack Taiwan, he would first make sure that he makes a call to his very junior partner in all of this, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,’ said Mark Rutte
Lithuanian and Czech troops return fire on a small guerrilla force of unknown aggressors. Two Nato soldiers are killed, and one attacker is captured. He claims to be a pro-Russian Lithuanian but his appearance and Russian dialect mark him out as a Chechen – that is, almost certainly a mercenary from Chechnya.
11.48: Putin claims that Russian forces in Kaliningrad have come under fire from ‘warmongering Lithuanian rebels’ and orders an invasion to seize control of the Suwalki Gap.
A squadron of SU-27 fighter jets screams low over the border, followed by two MiG-31s armed with Kinzhal missiles. These aircraft are part of the 132nd Composite
Aviation Division of Russia’s Baltic fleet, maintained by the 689th Guards Fighter Regiment, operating out of Chkalovsk airbase. The message is unmistakable: Russia is claiming dominance in the air.
12.02: Nato chief Mark Rutte announces that Nato’s collective defence clause, Article 5, is being invoked: Lithuania is a member of Nato, and as such any attack on it is deemed an attack on all Nato countries.
Privately, he is tearing his hair out: at his private home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, where it is 8am, President Trump has apparently not yet been woken by his aides. Rutte has spoken briefly to US defence secretary Pete Hegseth, whose response was: ‘Article 5? Sure, in theory, but what does that mean in reality? You’re seriously asking POTUS [the President of the United States] to declare war on Russia because of some low-flying planes? Get real!’
13.26: At the underground Cabinet Office Briefing Room A (Cobra) in Whitehall, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton warns Sir Keir Starmer that it would be foolhardy to use the RAF to push back in order to gain air supremacy over the Baltic states.
Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki has warned Russia to stay out of his nation’s airspace, but has not launched any direct challenge. Russia air defences in Kaliningrad are formidable, including S-300 and the more advanced S-400 ‘Growler’ systems.
An estimated 750,000 Chinese soldiers could arrive on the coast of the Taiwan Strait
November 5
06.30 GMT: The Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) battlegroup in Rukla, Lithuania, comes under fire from Russian artillery. This multinational tripwire force of mainly German troops, alongside soldiers from the BeNeLux nations, Norway and the Czech Republic, is based about 70 miles outside Vilnius.
Its role is to support the Lithuanian Mechanised Infantry Brigade – but many of those troops have been withdrawn to combat mercenary insurgents staging riots in Vilnius. Numbering about 1,700, the eFP takes more than 50 casualties before it is forced to retreat.
09.00: Nato, the Western military alliance that has overseen peace in Europe for nearly 80 years, publicly implodes via social media. President Trump posts a tweet on his Truth Social site: ‘I have talked with Putin. GREAT phone call. Lithuania is a FAILING country, needs stableness, and there’s a lot of Russian folks there who have to be kept SAFE. Vladimir is a friend of America and like ME he wants peace.’
15.35: UK Defence Secretary John Healey reports to Cobra that Russian tanks rolled into the outskirts of Vilnius 30 minutes ago, supported by aerial firepower.
The blackout is making it almost impossible for Lithuania’s forces to put up concerted resistance. Finland and Poland have pledged support but, with Russia controlling the Suwalki Gap, the logistics of sending reinforcements are all but impossible.
In the wake of Trump’s statement, Germany is more concerned with getting its eFP troops to safety across the border into Latvia. The British-led eFP in Estonia is braced for a Russian invasion that, so far, has not occurred.
November 6
04.00 GMT: (Noon in Beijing) President Xi praises Russia for ‘defending its citizens’ and pledges China’s full backing in both Lithuania and Ukraine.
This includes tens of thousands of stockpiled 122mm and 152mm shells, urgently needed by Russian gunners, as well as a consignment of DF-17 hypersonic missiles that can be launched from more than 1,000 miles away and are able to evade virtually any air defences. Xi is warm in his applause for Putin who has, he says, exposed Nato as a ‘paper tiger’.
He is gloating but not lying – decades during which the West has neglected its basic safety, choosing instead to pour money into an increasingly bloated welfare state, have undermined our armed forces to the point where our defences are utterly inadequate.
18.00: (02.00 next day in Beijing) Chinese missile batteries open up a barrage unprecedented in the history of warfare on Taiwan, the densely populated island 100 miles off the mainland coast.
Thousands of rockets scream out of the night sky, targeting Taiwan’s air force and its naval ports, its missile launchpads and its military command centres, radar stations and electronic anti-drone installations.
With the island’s air defences overwhelmed, and largely wiped out in this initial strike, swarms of drones follow – tens of thousands, possibly even 100,000. The majority are aimed at military targets, but about a quarter bombard the capital city, Taipei, programmed for pinpoint strikes on the apartments of influential Taiwanese figures. Politicians, journalists, business leaders, all with their families, are killed in their homes.
21.00: (17.00 in Washington, DC) Donald Trump warns that China will face ‘the motherload of all sanctions’ if an immediate ceasefire is not declared. He stops short of threatening any military aid for Taiwan, even though on the campaign trail last year he promised to ‘bomb the s*** out of Beijing’ in the event of an invasion.
November 7
01.00: (09.00 in Taiwan) Chinese warships begin to encircle the island, enforcing a blockade. These include Type 075 amphibious assault ships and the huge Type 076 carriers, almost 300 yards long and weighing 40,000 tons.
These are all equipped with surface-to-air missile launchers and electromagnetic catapults to launch fighter jets. They are also capable of transporting at least 1,000 marines, along with helicopters, drones and landing craft.
02.00: Waves of Chinese special forces parachute into Taiwan, meeting with heavy resistance as they attempt to neutralise the last of the island’s air defences. It is becoming clear that more than half of the government in Taipei and a swathe of the army’s middle-ranking officers, as well as a third of its fighter pilots, have been killed in drone attacks.
All news channels have been shut down, and an avalanche of disinformation from Chinese bots means no one knows what to believe on social media. Taiwan’s tightly packed population of more than 23 million is in utter panic.
04.00: An estimated 750,000 Chinese soldiers are massing on the coast of the Taiwan Strait. Five vast barges, with extendable landing ramps 100 yards long, are getting ready to make multiple crossings.
12.30: The White House confirms privately to Downing Street that the US does not intend to fight to save Taiwan. Donald Trump sees this as ‘a big, beautiful opportunity’ for America to become the West’s leading producer of electronic semi-conductors, breaking Taiwan’s monopoly.
All business dealings with China will be suspended. If Britain breaks the US embargo by buying Chinese goods, it will make itself a pariah – so Keir Starmer had better decide whether he wants the UK to be America’s friend or foe.
13.47: French President Emmanuel Macron, whose government has been forging closer trading ties to China, issues a statement recognising Xi’s right to annex Taiwan, and hopes that the takeover can be concluded without further violence. The island’s shattered government surrenders six hours later.
14.02: At a Cobra meeting, the Prime Minister faces two shameful decisions. In the South China Sea, the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is ordered to head away from Taiwan, to avoid the risk of antagonising Beijing. And, in the Baltic, the British battlegroup is ordered to retreat rather than offer resistance if and when Putin sends his tanks into Estonia.
In just five days, the balance of global power has altered radically. China has seized the prize it long desired. Russia has guaranteed the eventual conquest of Ukraine and begun to reclaim the Baltic states. Nato has disintegrated.
Europe is preparing a new alliance with the Far East. And Britain is exposed as a tiny island no better able to defend itself than Taiwan.
- General Sir Richard Shirreff is former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe for Nato.
