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De-escalating the conflict: What the OSCE, the UN, and Europe are (not) doing to prevent war

By Lorenzo Maria Pacini | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 4, 2026

Three signs of the same crisis

I want to ask all our readers – and you, the one reading this – a question: Do you want war?

Regardless of political, military, national, or ideological preferences, this is a serious question. Who really wants war?

We must all ask ourselves this question – and even more so, it should be asked by the politicians, technocrats, and power brokers in European chancelleries who continue to foment war.

We won’t discuss moral issues right now – we’ll write about those on another occasion. Let’s start with the institutional facts and try to understand whether and how anyone has attempted to bring about de-escalation – or not. Because when we read the Western press, there’s a constant impression that European leaders are the world’s best diplomats, constantly striving to solve global problems and ensure peace. Yet, there is a lack of sources, data, and concrete evidence. And where are all those institutions that were supposedly created to ensure peace for the entire world?

On September 30, 2026, Moscow delivered a non-paper to NATO declaring its readiness to deploy its entire arsenal, including nuclear weapons, should the Alliance attempt to isolate the Kaliningrad region. The document explicitly mentions the possibility of striking the decision-making centers of member countries from the very early stages of a conflict, and a senior European defense official noted that a threat phrased in these terms had not been heard since the end of the Cold War. Two weeks later, in Warsaw, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe responded that a Russian attack would be entirely futile. That same month, Russian border guards detained a German merchant ship in the Gulf of Finland for several hours.

Taken together, these incidents reflect the current dynamic: verbal deterrence on both sides, low-intensity incidents, and the absence of any mechanism capable of defusing them before they escalate into a crisis. This article argues that de-escalation between Europe and Russia does not depend primarily on the goodwill of governments. It depends on rebuilding a risk-containment architecture that Europe has allowed to erode over the course of twenty years. That architecture does not need to be invented from scratch: it already exists, in a dormant form, within the mechanisms of the OSCE and the United Nations system. These are the only multilateral forums in which Europe and Russia still sit together as full members, and for this very reason, they are the only ones capable of producing agreements that both sides can consider their own.

Each side interprets the other’s rearmament as offensive preparation. In Moscow, it is claimed that NATO and the European Union are preparing for a confrontation around 2030; in various Western military circles, the 2028–2030 window is specifically identified as the period during which a Russian attack would become possible. These are mirror-image predictions, and mirror-image predictions tend to become self-fulfilling, because every defensive measure confirms the adversary’s suspicion. It’s the security dilemma – elementary, Watson.

Compared to the Cold War, however, one decisive element is missing. Back then, the rivalry was framed by treaties, hotlines, notifications of military exercises, and mutual inspections. That framework has largely disappeared today. The INF Treaty expired in 2019, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe has been abandoned, the Open Skies regime has been gutted, and New START is set to expire in February 2026 without a successor. Two armed powers face off along a line stretching from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea, and they do so without a safety net.

Added to this is a more strictly political problem. Europe is the object of the conflict but not a party to the negotiations. Talks on Ukraine are mediated by Washington: on October 11, the U.S. president announced an energy truce that neither Moscow nor Kiev has confirmed; at the end of the month, a local ceasefire went into effect in Oleški, and a new round of negotiations is expected in mid-November. Europe appears in this context as a financier and potential guarantor, but remains far from the table where the terms are being defined. Yet whatever agreement emerges from that table will reshape the continent’s security order. The paradox is clear: Europeans have institutions built precisely for this purpose, yet they have stopped using them.

The absurdity of a conventional war – repetition helps

Before discussing the tools, it is worth stating frankly what rarely appears in official statements: for Europe, a conventional war against Russia would be a strategic absurdity, and Europe is not willing to fight it. We have already written this many times, it is true, but as the ancients used to say, “repetita iuvant” – repetition helps. This statement holds true in three respects.

The first is material. Four and a half years of war in Ukraine have shown that high-intensity conflict in our century is a war of attrition: victory is achieved by producing ammunition, drones, and equipment faster than the adversary can destroy them, and by replacing troops faster than they are lost. Russia has restructured its economy for this purpose. At the 2025 Hague Summit, European allies decided to raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035: a ten-year timeframe that amounts to an implicit admission that such capacity does not exist today. Industries remain fragmented into dozens of incompatible weapons systems, stockpiles have been depleted to support Kiev, and the capabilities that make a modern campaign possible – from satellite intelligence to in-flight refueling – depend largely on the United States.

The second aspect is social and political. European societies are neither prepared nor willing to endure losses in the tens of thousands of men. Debates over the reinstatement of conscription in Germany and other countries show just how open and divisive the issue remains. No European government could ask its citizens to make a sacrifice on that scale for any purpose other than the immediate defense of its national territory.

The third implication is the most serious. A conventional war with a nuclear power does not remain conventional for long. The September non-paper states this in no uncertain terms: in a conflict of this kind, there would be no distant front line and no safe rear, because European capitals would be the front line. Preparing to defend oneself is legitimate and necessary. Believing that one can win such a war – or even simply fight it without losing what one intends to defend – is a miscalculation. For this reason, de-escalation is not just one moral choice among many: it is the only rational policy available to Europe. It remains to be determined what tools to use to achieve it.

The institutions Europe seems to have forgotten

The OSCE is the successor to the 1975 Helsinki Conference, the only forum in which, at the height of the bipolar confrontation, rival blocs managed to codify common principles: the inviolability of borders, the non-use of force, economic cooperation, and human rights. The 1990 Charter of Paris and the Charter on European Security adopted in Istanbul in 1999 added the principle of the indivisibility of security, according to which no state may strengthen its own security at the expense of others’. It is a principle that both Moscow and Western capitals invoke today, interpreting it in opposite ways. Precisely for this reason, it serves as a starting point: the parties do not debate whether security is indivisible, but rather what this entails in practice.

Behind these principles lies a technical framework that few outside of experts are familiar with. The Vienna Document governs the prior notification of military activities, the annual exchange of information on military forces, and assessment visits. The Forum for Security Cooperation is the venue where participating States discuss conventional arms control. The Conflict Prevention Center manages the communications network linking the capitals and can activate urgent consultation mechanisms in the event of unusual military activities. In 2016, the OSCE also launched a Structured Dialogue on threat perceptions, doctrines, and force deployments: an exercise that was discontinued but which nevertheless constitutes the closest precedent to what Europe needs today. Finally, it should be noted that the Organization has declared itself a regional arrangement under Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter: its initiatives can therefore operate within a framework of universal legitimacy.

The most significant operational experience is the Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, active from 2014 to 2022 with several hundred unarmed civilian observers. Its limitations were real: restricted access, no coercive power, and reports contested by both sides. Yet for eight years, it was the only impartial, daily source of information on ceasefire violations in the Donbas, and its end – when Russia refused to consent to the renewal of its mandate – coincided with the transition to the full-fledged SMO. The Organization emerged weakened, with budgets approved only with great difficulty and presidencies hampered by cross-vetoes, but it is not dead. Russia neither withdrew nor was expelled, and the Swiss presidency for 2026 has openly stated its intention to prepare the OSCE to monitor a potential ceasefire: monitoring the contact line, verifying violations, and even providing electoral assistance. Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis has acknowledged that the Organization can deploy only a few dozen people on short notice, while the front line stretches for about 1,300 kilometers. What is needed, therefore, is a significant political and financial commitment from the participating states. That commitment is exactly what Europe could and should offer.

Alongside the OSCE is the United Nations system, which Europeans tend to view as paralyzed by the Russian veto. This is an incomplete assessment. The Security Council adopted Resolution 2202 in 2015 in support of the Minsk Agreements and, in February 2025, Resolution 2774 calling for a swift end to the conflict – with Russia voting in favor. In July 2022, the Black Sea Grain Initiative, negotiated by the United Nations together with Turkey, demonstrated that even in the midst of fighting, a functional and limited agreement can hold for an entire year if it is managed by a joint coordination center with verifiable rules. Since September 2022, experts from the IAEA, a UN agency, have maintained a permanent presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – the only stable international presence on a front line. Geneva, the European headquarters of the United Nations, already hosted trilateral talks between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine in 2026.

From this perspective, the veto power takes on a new meaning. An observation mission authorized by the Security Council would require Russian consent, and for this very reason, Moscow could not view it as a hostile measure. The same applies to the consensus rule within the OSCE. What appears to be a limitation is in fact the condition of legitimacy: a safeguard mechanism that the other party helped establish is one that the other party has an interest in not sabotaging. This is the essential difference between a reassurance force composed of European national contingents – which Moscow has already declared unacceptable – and a multilateral presence with a UN mandate and an OSCE operational structure.

Four levels of de-escalation

On this basis, four levels of intervention can be distinguished, ordered from the most urgent to the most ambitious. For each, European multilateral forums already offer a starting point.

The first is incident management. The Baltic Sea is currently the theater most vulnerable to unintended escalation: heavy traffic, the Kaliningrad enclave, the so-called “shadow fleet,” undersea cables, and nearly daily aerial intercepts. In 1972, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Agreement on Incidents at Sea at the height of the bipolar rivalry. It worked because it did not require trust, but only predictability, with rules on distances, maneuvers, and communications. A Baltic agreement modeled on that agreement, along with a direct line of communication between regional military commands and an identification system for military flights, would cost little and reduce tensions significantly. In February, Washington and Moscow agreed to reestablish military dialogue. Europeans, who live along the front lines, have even stronger reasons to demand their own channel, and the communications network of the Center for Conflict Prevention could provide the infrastructure without having to create anything new.

The second level concerns the transparency and clarity of red lines. The non-paper on Kaliningrad, regardless of its tone, makes clear where Moscow draws its line. Responding with equal clarity is not a concession. Thomas Schelling demonstrated this precisely: clear commitments stabilize, while ambiguity regarding limited actions destabilizes, because it invites testing the limits. Europe can explicitly state that it does not intend to isolate the enclave, reaffirm the transit guarantees already tested during the 2022 Lithuanian crisis, and revive – even on a voluntary and reciprocal basis – the notifications of major exercises provided for in the Vienna Document. The Forum for Security Cooperation is the natural venue for doing so.

The third level is arms control, where the vacuum is most dangerous. The end of the INF Treaty has reopened the issue of ground-based intermediate-range missiles: on the one hand, the announced deployment of U.S. long-range systems in Germany; on the other, Russian delivery systems in Belarus. These are weapons with flight times of just a few minutes, which compress the time available for political decision-making to the point of virtually eliminating it. A mutual and verifiable moratorium on their deployment on the continent would be the step offering the best cost-benefit ratio. Moscow had put forward such a proposal in 2019, but it was rejected due to the lack of verification guarantees. The challenge, then, is to establish a verification mechanism, and the resumption of the Structured Dialogue within the OSCE would allow this to be done in a format where Europeans are participants – not mere spectators – in Russian-American negotiations.

The fourth level is the political framework, and the crux of the matter remains Ukraine. There can be no de-escalation between Europe and Russia without a ceasefire in Ukraine, nor a stable ceasefire without a guarantee mechanism that Moscow does not interpret as a NATO advance. Three recommendations follow from this. Europe must secure a seat at the table, through a contact group or a small-group format with a clear mandate. It must prepare a package for the gradual easing of sanctions linked to verifiable steps, because sanctions are also a bargaining chip, and a chip that is never spent eventually loses its value. Above all, it must propose, as a guarantee mechanism, an OSCE-led monitoring mission authorized by the United Nations Security Council and substantially funded by European states. This would be the most concrete way to translate the financial burden that Europe already bears into political influence.

Fears, hopes, risks

A deliberate attack by Russia against an Alliance country – or vice versa – remains unlikely in the short term. More likely is the possibility that an incident in the Baltic – a drone straying off course, a ship-to-ship collision, a severed cable – could escalate into a crisis due to a lack of mechanisms capable of containing it. That is where the greatest risk lies, and that is where diplomacy can act immediately: an agreement on incident response, a direct hotline, declared red lines, and mutual notifications. The rest – the missile moratorium, a seat at the table, a guarantee mission under the auspices of the UN and the OSCE – requires time and political courage.

In 2025, the Helsinki Final Act marked its fiftieth anniversary, in a climate that made the occasion almost embarrassing. Yet that document was signed by adversaries who did not trust one another, and it was precisely for this reason that they established rules.

Europe – probably, perhaps, maybe, who knows – does not need to invent a new security order; it needs to go back to using the one it already has, and to do so before an incident renders that choice unnecessary.

November 4, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Comments Off on De-escalating the conflict: What the OSCE, the UN, and Europe are (not) doing to prevent war

US silent on Russia’s missile moratorium proposal – Lavrov

RT | June 9, 2025

The US has so far ignored Moscow’s call to impose limits on its deployment of intermediate-range missiles, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Speaking at the Future Forum 2050 on Monday, Lavrov stated that Washington had not responded to an offer Putin had made to establish reciprocal moratoriums after the collapse of the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

“It’s already clear they will not react to our call, in the absence of the treaty, to establish two parallel, non-interlinked moratoriums,” he said.

The INF Treaty, signed in 1987 by the US and the Soviet Union, banned land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Washington withdrew from the deal in 2019, citing alleged violations by Moscow.

Russia has denied the claims, accusing the US of developing the banned missiles, but pledged not to deploy such systems unless the US did so first.

Last year, the US announced that it would field the multipurpose Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), the Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile, and a hypersonic weapon that is still in development in “episodic deployments” in Germany starting in 2026. The two systems would have been banned by the INF Treaty, assuming they were deployed on land.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov signaled that Russia would not be constrained by any limitations if it ends its self-imposed moratorium. “One way or another, Russia will have to respond to NATO’s expansionist and aggressive actions,” he explained.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov also noted that Moscow would soon be forced to walk back its current policy. “Russia’s restraint in the post-INF period was not appreciated by the US and its allies and was not met with reciprocity,” he said. “We have openly and directly stated that the unilateral moratorium is approaching its logical end.”

He also rebuked the US for an apparent reluctance to alter its course. “We do not see any fundamental change, let alone reversal, in US plans to forward-deploy ground-based intermediate and shorter-range missiles in various regions,” he said. “On the contrary, practical steps taken by the US military have convinced us that such activity will only intensify.”

June 9, 2025 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Russian Ambassador Slams UK-German Missile Scheme As Militarization of Europe

Sputnik – 23.05.2025

The recent development of a new precision weapon with a 2,000-kilometer range—announced on May 15 by the UK and Germany—represents another setback for arms control, following the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), Russian Ambassador Andrei Kelin told Sputnik.

“This is part of a new wave of militarization in Europe under the pretext of a threat from Russia. This is another blow to the regime established 30 years ago by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This treaty was destroyed by the Americans,” Kelin said.

The high-precision weapon development plan, it was noted, seeks “to strengthen NATO’s deterrent capabilities.”

“When these missiles were banned, Europe’s security as a whole was at a much higher level. Now, unfortunately, another blow will be struck by the Europeans,” the ambassador emphasized.

In July 2024, the British press reported that London was considering a joint missile development project with Berlin, featuring a range of up to 3,200 kilometers. It is believed that these missiles could eventually replace American cruise missiles stationed in Germany.

In early 2019, the United States announced its unilateral withdrawal from the INF Treaty, accusing Russia of violations, a claim Moscow rejected. In July 2019, the Russian president signed a law suspending the treaty, and by August of that year, the pact officially ceased to be in effect. Russia has consistently maintained that it fully complied with the INF’s terms.

Meanwhile, Moscow emphasized that Russia has serious concerns regarding Washington’s implementation of the treaty and pointed out that the allegations of Russian violations are baseless.

May 23, 2025 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

US to Spend $1 Trillion on Nuclear Weapons Over Next Decade

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | May 15, 2025

According to the Congressional Budget Office, Washington will spend $1 trillion from 2025 to 2034 on modernizing and operating America’s strategic arsenal.

“If carried out, DoD’s and DOE’s plans to operate, sustain, and modernize current nuclear forces and purchase new forces would cost a total of $946 billion over the 2025–2034 period, or an average of about $95 billion a year, CBO estimates,” the report says.

The spending includes $357 billion on operating nuclear weapons and delivery systems, $460 billion on modernization projects, and $130 billion in expected cost overruns. The CBO report notes that Pentagon plans often cost significantly more than projected.

The forecast in this year’s CBO report is $93 billion higher than the estimate produced last year.

“Weapons programs frequently cost more than originally budgeted amounts for a variety of reasons.” It continues, “If nuclear force programs exceeded planned amounts at roughly the same rates that costs for similar programs have grown in the past, they would cost an additional $129 billion over the next decade, $33 billion more over 10 years than CBO estimated in 2023.”

Washington is in the process of a major nuclear weapons upgrade. The US is developing a new bomber, an intercontinental ballistic missile, and a submarine capable of firing nuclear weapons.

The US nuclear buildup comes as Washington has walked away from several major arms control agreements with Russia since the end of the Cold War. Under George W. Bush, the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the INF and the Open Skies agreements during his first term.

During his second term, Trump has denounced nuclear weapons and suggested he could engage in talks with Russia and China on an agreement to reduce the global stockpile of nuclear arms.

However, Trump made similar remarks during his first term, but never seriously engaged in arms control talks with Beijing or Moscow. The only remaining nuclear arms agreement between the US and Russia, the New START Treaty, is scheduled to lapse next year.

May 15, 2025 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

New US Nuke Deployment in Europe Raises Serious Questions About NATO’s True Nature

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.01.2025

The United States has begun the forward deployment of a new generation of its B61 nuclear gravity bomb at bases in Europe, a senior administrator has announced. What signal does the deployment send to Moscow? What impact will it have on strategic security in Europe? Sputnik turned to a senior former Pentagon insider for answers.

“The new B61-12 gravity bombs are fully forward deployed, and we have increased NATO’s visibility to our nuclear capabilities through visits to our enterprise and other regular engagements,” US National Nuclear Security Administration chief Jill Hruby revealed in a talk at the Hudson Institute this week.

“Our strategic partnership with the UK is very strong, as is their commitment to their nuclear deterrent. And we have advanced our thinking together about critical supply chain resilience. NATO is strong,” Hruby added, hinting at the prospects for ‘enhanced’ nuclear cooperation.

Reports have been swirling in recent years about US plans to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons in the UK at the RAF base at Lakenheath, although no official announcements have been made to date.

The B61-12, also known as the B61 Mod 12, is the latest upgrade to the US variable yield nuclear gravity bomb design first rolled out in the late 1960s. The Mod 12 is set to replace the older Mod 3, 4 and 7 variants of the weapon, and features a 0.3-50 kt yield.

Testing of the B61-12 was completed in 2020, with production starting in late 2021, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists expecting 400-500 of the weapons to be produced, in part for deployments abroad.

Older variants of the munition are currently deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkiye’s Incerlick Air Base. NATO has approved the weapons to be used in battle by select alliance members as part of the bloc’s “nuclear sharing” arrangements.

The announcement of the bombs’ deployment in Europe is meant to “signal to Moscow that NATO and particularly the UK… are prepared for any ‘attack’ on any NATO country,” says ex-DoD analyst Michael Maloof.

What it really signals is just how much of a US protectorate Western European countries and the UK have allowed themselves to become, Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst with the Office of the US Secretary of Defense, said.

“When I used to live there on a military base, we used to joke how the UK was nothing but a floating aircraft carrier because of all the US bases on the RAF facilities there,” the observer, who grew up in southern England during the Cold War, recalled.

The nukes’ deployment once again “underscores how NATO has evolved not into a defensive alliance, but an offensive alliance,” with the bases where the bombs are stored obvious targets for Russia in the event of a deadly escalation, Maloof said.

Can Trump Fix a Broken Alliance?

Maloof hopes that under Trump 2.0, “a total reevaluation of the deployment of US bases throughout NATO” will take place, especially in Germany but possibly also the UK.
NATO’s continued existence, the alliance’s “Cold War 2.0” against Russia and the bloc’s eastward expansion have been a disaster for European security, the observer said.

“I think it’s the beginning of the end of NATO as we know it. This perennial cycle has just got to cease. And given how we don’t even have a defense against hypersonics… it really shows that we’re reaching a very dangerous pinnacle here of escalation.”

The nuke deployment, the termination of the INF Treaty during Trump’s first term and other factors have “made Europe an all the more dangerous place to be,” Maloof emphasized, with reaction time in case of a nuclear escalation being “virtually nil.”

“I think that this posturing that we continually see to ‘show deterrence’ is actually making the West even more vulnerable to attack because it is an agitating factor,” the observer added.

January 18, 2025 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Withdrew From Arms Treaties to Develop New Weapons – Russian General

Sputnik – 18.12.2024

The US pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM), Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) and Open Skies treaties so it could build more destructive weapons, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov has said.

“The situation is also aggravated by the crisis in the system of international arms control commitments and agreements,” Gerasimov told a briefing for foreign military attaches.

“Since 2002, the United States has destroyed all the agreements in this area signed during the Cold War — the ABM Treaty, the INF Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty,” he noted.

“The reason why the United States withdrew from these agreements was the desire to ensure the possibility of creating new types of weapons, which were considered the most destructive.”

Gerasimov said the first and foremost issue was medium- and short-range missiles, as well as the US deployment of its missile defense systems in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

The general said Russia’s Armed Forces in 2024 had met all the tasks set by the government.

“Summing up the performance of the Armed Forces this year, I would like to note that all the tasks set by the country’s leadership have been fulfilled,” Gerasimov said.

He noted that the renewal of weapons and military equipment was underway and the level of training of the command and units was increasing.

Much practical experience had been gained during the special operation in combat operations by various formations, use of aviation, air defense and other units.

More than 30 countries have provided Ukraine with $350 billion in financial aid, including about $170 billion for military needs, and more than 165,000 Ukrainian servicemen have been trained to NATO standards, Gerasimov said.

But the goals of the special military operation would definitely be achieved, he insisted.

The general added that the proportion of strategic nuclear forces units equipped with the newest weapons was now at 95 percent.

Gerasimov announced that the first regiment equipped with the S-500 surface-to-air missile system, which is capable of strategic missile defense, was on the verge of completion.

December 18, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

New Russian Missile Delivers Six Warheads and Three Messages

By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | November 27, 2024

On November 21, just two days after Ukraine acted for the first time on American permission to fire Western supplied long-range missiles deeper into Russia, Russia launched a missile attack on a military base in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. That base houses the missile and space company Pivdenmash, which produces missiles, rockets, satellites and engines.

The attack included six cruise missiles and a Kinzhal hypersonic missile. There is nothing new or unusual about hitting that military target or about using those missiles. But there was something very unusual about the 9M729 Oreshnik missile that was also included in the attack.

The Oreshnik is a new intermediate range ballistic missile that has never been seen or used before. Ted Postol, professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls it an “absolutely new weapon.” Russian President Vladimir Putin called the Orseshnik “experimental” and said that the strike was a test fire.

Though intermediate range ballistic missiles like Oreshnik are typically designed to carry nuclear warheads, the missile used in this attack was armed with conventional warheads.

What is remarkable about the demonstration of the Oreshnik is that it flew at around Mach 10 or 11, making it a hypersonic missile. Unlike ordinary ballistic missiles, this one seemed to increase its range by gliding parallel to the earth during part of its flight path instead of maintaining the expected inverted U-shape ballistic trajectory.

Hypersonic missiles are very hard to hit with air defense systems. This missile may be even harder to hit because it carries six warheads, each of which carries six submunitions, which means that the missile releases thirty-six warheads, probably with the addition of several decoys. Analysts say that each of those thirty-six submunitions may take a different trajectory before hitting the same target. That, and the ability of the thirty-six warheads to overwhelm a missile defense system, make it very hard to intercept all the warheads.

In his televised address, Putin said, “There are no means of countering such weapons today.” Certainly, there are no air defense systems in Ukraine that can defend against them. Putin says that the missile defense systems deployed by the United States in Europe are powerless against them. Analysts suggest that most American air defense systems are not up to the challenge of the Oreshnik missile and that, those that might be, could be overwhelmed by the multiple payload, especially if the first missile was followed by a second.

Russia’s Defense Ministry says that all of the missile’s warheads hit their target, and Putin says that after the successful operational test the Oreshnik missile will go into serial production.

The mainstream media has reported that video evidence suggests that the missile may actually have been carrying only dummy warheads. Ukrainian authorities are investigating that possibility. Postol told me that this interpretation is not quite correct. The missiles were not dummies, but they were not armed with explosives possibly because they did not need to be. At the speed these submunitions are flying at, they liquify when they hit the ground and then expand rapidly. Like a meteor impact, this creates a massive explosion without the need to arm the missiles with explosives.

As the missile delivers multiple warheads, so the warheads delivered multiple messages.

The first is a response to the United States calling Putin’s bluff on declaring Ukraine’s firing of Western long-range missiles deeper into Russian territory with American guidance a red line. The Oreshnik missile ups the ante and shows that Russia was not bluffing.

“Putin made clear,” The New York Times tells the West, “that the Russian missile test was a response to those strikes.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “The main message is that the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries that produce missiles, supply them to Ukraine, and subsequently participate in strikes on Russian territory cannot remain without a reaction from the Russian side.”

Most pointedly, Putin said, “We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities.”

The second reason is a response to the American withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. That treaty, signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1987 and negated by Donald Trump in 2019, would have rendered missiles like the Oreshnik obsolete.

When discussing the first use of the Oreshnik intermediate range ballistic missile, Putin said, “It was not Russia but the United States that destroyed the system of international security,” referring to the American withdrawal from the treaty. He said that by clinging onto “hegemony,” the United States is “pushing the whole world toward a global conflict.”

In a televised address, Putin said, “It is a mistake on the part of the United States to destroy the system that was established by the [INF] missile treaty in 2019. We see that the United States and their allies are now considering, and have successfully tested, their capabilities to deploy advanced missile systems in different parts of the world, and their exercises routinely include the use of such systems…The use of the novel [Oreshnik] system, which was essentially an operational test, was carried out in response to the decisions made by the United States and their allies.”

And that leads into the third reason. Firing the Oreshnik missile was a response to the official U.S. opening of an air defense base in Redzikowo in northern Poland. The Aegis Ashore missile system is capable of intercepting short and intermediate range ballistic missiles. But it is also capable of firing nuclear tipped Tomahawk missiles that would take only minutes to arrive in Russia. Russia also sees it as a provocative move to weaken Russia’s nuclear deterrent potential.

The United States has long claimed that the missiles are not a threat to Russia and that their purpose is to intercept missiles fired from Iran. Russia has never believed that claim. Russia’s suspicion was confirmed when, at the opening ceremony, Polish President Andrzej Duda announced, “The whole world will see clearly that this is not Russia’s sphere of interest anymore.”

Russia has now added the Polish military base to its list of “priority targets for potential destruction.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, called the opening of the base another step in the “decades-long destructive policy of bringing NATO military infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders.”

Peskov said that Russia would respond to the base by “adopting appropriate measures to ensure parity,” while Zakharova said that military bases like the one in Poland could be destroyed by “a wide range of the latest weapons,” a possible reference to the Oreshnik missile.

Putin seemed to specifically include the Polish base as a motivation for demonstrating the abilities of the Oreshnik missile when he said that “[m]issiles like Oreshnik are our answer to NATO’s plans to deploy medium- and shorter-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.”

Though the United States and its Western partners continue to make escalatory decisions on the bet that Vladimir Putin is bluffing with his talk of red lines, the powerful demonstration of the Oreshnik intermediate range, hypersonic ballistic missile is a caution, once again, that the confidence behind that bet might be unfounded.

November 27, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia unveils new weapon system as a warning to Ukraine and the West

By Scott Ritter | November 21, 2024

Russia has apparently launched a single RS-26 Rubezh road mobile missile against a target in Dnipro, Ukraine (Dnipropetrovsk).

According to Ukrainian authorities, the missile struck an unnamed industrial enterprise.

Dnipro is home to the Pivdenmash (former Yuzhmash) missile production facility.

Analysis of imagery of the attack indicates the RS-26 carried six independent warheads, each in turn deploying several submunitions.

This warhead package is exclusively for conventional attack.

Russia had not been previously assessed to outfit the RS-26 with a warhead of this design.

By unveiling the conventionally armed RS-26, Russia is changing the qualitative nature of the conflict, something promised by President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine and its Western allies must now evaluate the destructive potential of this weapon, and understand that Russia can deliver this warhead to any target in Ukraine or Europe knowing there is no defense against it.

The RS-26 is produced in Votkinsk. It is assessed that the production of the RS-26, which was halted in 2017, was resumed this past summer. With production rates estimated at 6-8 missiles per month, Russia could have accumulated an arsenal of between 30-40 RS-26 missiles. Although described as an intercontinental ballistic missile, the RS-26’s range actually depends on the warhead package. If armed with a single warhead, it can exceed the 5,000 kilometer threshold used to differentiate between intermediate and intercontinental range missiles. The RS-26 did not go into serial production because of this ambiguity; at the time, Russia was a signatory to the INF treaty, which prohibited intermediate range missiles.

It is assessed that the six warhead conventional warhead package used against Dnipro would have made the RS-26 used fall into the intermediate range for classification.
Donald Trump withdrew from the INF treaty in 2019.

If the United States had remained in the treaty, this version of the RS-26 would not have been available for use by Russia.

November 21, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Opens Provocative Missile Base in Poland

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | November 14, 2024

After nearly two decades, President George W. Bush’s plan to put the Aegis Ashore missile system in Poland was achieved this week. The system is capable of firing offensive missiles, and is viewed as a serious national security threat by Russia.

The base is located in Redzikowo, Northern Poland, near the Baltic coast. During the base’s opening ceremony, Polish President Andrzej Duda said, “The whole world will see clearly that this is not Russia’s sphere of interest anymore… From the Polish point of view, this is strategically the most important thing.”

Since the base was announced by Bush, Washington has asserted that the purpose of installing the missile defense system in Poland, and a second in Romania, was to protect Europe from Iranian missile attacks.

However, the launchers that fire the Aegis interceptors can also fire offensive Tomahawk missiles. Previously, the US fielded a variant of the Tomahawk that was capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. The Kremlin views the presence of the launchers in Eastern Europe as a strategic threat to Russia.

As the base was under planning and construction, Russian President Vladimir Putin pressed multiple American presidents not to deploy the Aegis Ashore systems in Poland and Romania. The Polish Foreign Minister noted during the opening ceremony, “Governments changed in the United States, in Poland, [since] this base was created. This base is a monument not only to the Polish-American alliance, its stability, but also to the Polish-Polish alliance.”

Moscow argued that the system’s MK-41 launchers violated the INF Treaty, a bilateral arms control pact between the US and Russia. The treaty explicitly outlaws the deployment of intermediate land-based offensive missile launchers. The MK-41 can fire Tomahawks. During the first Donald Trump presidency, Washington unilaterally left the INF Treaty.

On Wednesday, the Kremlin Spokesman said Russia would respond to the base opening but did not provide details. “Of course, this requires the adoption of appropriate measures to maintain parity,” he stated.

While the Aegis system has created significant friction between Russia and NATO, Warsaw wants to further expand the missile base. Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Monday the scope of the shield needed to be expanded.

November 14, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Toward a Second Cuban Missile Crisis?

Theodore Postol, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Glenn Diesen | August 6, 2024

I had a very interesting discussion with Alexander Mercouris and Theodore Postol – a nuclear engineer and missile technology expert professor from MIT and former advisor to the Pentagon.

Professor Postol spoke about the new missiles that the US will deploy to Germany, which will be able to reach Moscow within 2-3 minutes and thus dramatically elevate the potential for a successful nuclear first-strike. Russia will have very little time to respond to a possible strike, which increases the risk of an accidental nuclear war or a NATO nuclear first-strike. Russia will have to respond by decentralising decision-making and granting more people the authority to launch a counter-strike against the US to reduce the threat of a decapitating strike against Russia’s decision-making headquarters, and Russia will be under pressure to launch a pre-emptive strike on the US/NATO if it suspects a first-strike in coming. This has happened before when NATO’s Able Archer exercise in 1983 almost triggered a Soviet nuclear attack as Moscow thought the NATO military exercise was a cover for a first-strike.

As the world was almost consumed by a nuclear holocaust, both Washington and Moscow recognised the need to extend the warning period for a possible nuclear first-strike. The result was the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987 to remove an entire class of missiles from Europe (500-5,500km range). In 2019, the US unilaterally withdrew from the INF Treaty, and new missiles will now be deployed to Germany which will give the US the possibility to strike Moscow with almost no warning. The US and Germany are thus setting the stage for something comparable to another Cuban Missile Crisis. The decision has no clear purpose in terms of improving security, it does not respond to any changes in the Russian nuclear posture, and the obedient media has offered no critical reporting.

August 7, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

INF Treaty Stood in Way of Plans to Militarize Europe, Hold Russia Back – Ex-DoD Analyst

Sputnik – 02.08.2024

WASHINGTON – The United States scrapped the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty five years ago with the aim of expanding NATO further eastward, pressing Russia economically and militarily, and cementing America’s global hegemony, veteran Pentagon analyst and retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.

August 2 marks the fifth anniversary of the US’s formal withdrawal from the INF Treaty.

“This [the pullout from the treaty] was due to the US desire (led by neoconservatives in the State Department and elsewhere in the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations) to expand NATO eastward, as well to engage militarily on Russia’s European border with both conventional and nuclear arms, specifically via Ukraine,” Kwiatkowski said.

The military and economic rise of China, a neoconservative theme for the past 30 years, required in the eyes of hawkish US military planners a nuclear offensive line in Eastern Europe to hold Russia “captive,” Kwiatkowski explained.

“The INF Treaty always stood in the way of this,” she said.

Russia had formally complained of continual US violations of the INF Treaty since 2014, but this was information most Americans and Europeans never saw, and most were not even interested in, Kwiatkowski noted.

“The consequences have been straightforward and dangerous. First, both the United States and Russia are now actively engaged in an expensive competition in the INF field and other new missile technology arenas,” she said.

Unlike in 1987, Russian technological and economic capabilities in this space now exceed those of the United States, Kwiatkowski assessed.

“Instead of US-Russia treaties that could engage and limit war preparation, we have NATO expansion, including an attempt to NATO-ize former INF signatory Ukraine,” she said.

After two post-Cold War batch accessions to the NATO alliance in 1999 and 2004, the accessions of six new member countries since 2009 have created a larger “border” between Russia and NATO, Kwiatkowski cautioned.

“Peace and diplomacy were now not only verboten, or forbidden but for five years have been institutionally impossible in Europe, thanks in part to the elimination of the INF Treaty and abnormally weak and intellectually impoverished US and NATO leadership over the same time frame,” she concluded.

The INF treaty, signed between the Soviet Union and the US in 1987, banned the countries from developing and possessing ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges from 500-5,500 kilometers. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the treaty, accusing Russia of non-compliance. In response to the US decision, Russia suspended its participation in the Cold War-era accord.

August 2, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Russia Rules Out All Nuclear Talks With US Until Washington Adopts a ‘Sane’ Approach

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | July 8, 2024

A top Russian diplomat stressed that the Kremlin is unwilling to engage with the White House on arms control issues due to the Biden administration’s Russophobic stance. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov argued that President Donald Trump left the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) to provoke China.

In an interview with The International Affairs published on Monday, Ryabkov explained Moscow’s position on arms control talks with Washington. “We do not have the foundation right now and we are not even close to shaping one in order to launch a tentative dialogue, not talks even, in this field. This is a result of Washington’s destructive policy course,” he stated.

“Until [the US] clearly show some change for the better in their policy, at the very least, demonstrate that this boundless and unabashed Russophobia has been set aside and is replaced with a slightly more sane approach,” he said, adding, “until this happens, there simply can be no dialogue on strategic stability.”

Since the end of the Cold War, Washington has abandoned a series of agreements that limited the US and Russia’s conventional as well as nuclear arsenals. Additionally, the Kremlin left the New Start Treaty in response to the White House’s support for Kiev.

The deterioration of the global arms control agreement has coincided with a rise in spending on nuclear weapons and arms overall. Both Beijing and Moscow view the launchers as highly provocative. Ryabkov argued Trump left the INF Treaty to build intermediate-range missiles to intimidate China.

“Americans needed to withdraw from the treaty in order to create such systems to intimidate the People’s Republic of China,” Ryabkov said. “And it is no coincidence that we have recently had a sharply intensified discussion about when and where the Americans might begin to deploy their medium-range weapons in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Recently, Washington and Moscow have taken steps to use arms limited by the INF Treaty. The agreement barred land-based missiles, and launchers, with a range of 300-3,400 miles. The US has deployed a covert launcher for intermediate-range missiles to Denmark and the Philippines for war games.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would begin producing weapons that the INF Treaty outlawed. “We need to start production of these strike systems and then, based on the actual situation, make decisions about where — if necessary to ensure our safety — to place them,” he stated.

July 8, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

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