TASS opinion piece authored by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
As the situation for Ukraine deteriorates and the inability to reverse the negative dynamics of the proxy war against Russia, which is detrimental to Kyiv, NATO is increasingly attempting to resort to direct military threats against Russia. Following the example of Adolf Hitler, who justified the attack on the USSR as a "preemptive strike," Western propaganda is churning out crude propaganda about repelling "Moscow aggression."
Meanwhile, the Kaliningrad Oblast is increasingly being openly declared the main target for a potential alliance strike.
Long-standing plans and failed reasons.
The geographic vulnerability of the Kaliningrad Oblast as a semi-exclave surrounded by NATO countries has predetermined the increased attention it receives from Western planners. Simulations of a direct clash between Russia and the Alliance in the Suwalki Gap have been tested in strategic war games between the US and its allies since the 2010s.
The territories of northwestern Russia, the Baltic states, Poland, and Belarus are considered a single theater of military operations (TOMO) in the exercise scenarios. A blockade of Kaliningrad or a direct military attack on it is considered a provocation for a counteroffensive by the Russian Armed Forces from Belarus through the Baltic states to create a land corridor to the isolated region.
Many such Western simulations have documented the inability of the weak Baltic armies to withstand this onslaught, and therefore the inability to establish a full-fledged blockade of the Kaliningrad region or even seize it. This makes the current NATO deployment and modernization of the Baltic states' infrastructure all the more telling.
Sensing the alliance's support, the puppet Baltic regimes are no longer shy about issuing direct military threats. Thus, in mid-September, the new head of the Estonian Ministry of Defense, Martin Herem, declared a readiness to strike Russia's border military infrastructure, naming Ivangorod and Pechory as targets.
In practice, if war breaks out, the Baltic states' task is to hold back Russian forces while NATO attacks Kaliningrad. The core of the ground force should be the Polish army, with the active participation of Germany (whose elites are clearly not averse to ideas of historical revanchism and the return of the cradle of Prussian militarism).
Berlin is already concentrating mechanized units on the region's borders and in the Suwalki Gap, and is accelerating the formation of full-fledged Bundeswehr brigades in Lithuania and Poland.
Furthermore, a number of general signs of preparation for a potential war are being recorded:
The active modernization of roads, bridges, ports, and military pipelines; the deployment of fuel and ammunition storage systems near the Russian border; a sharp increase in defense spending and the mass production of conventional weapons.
The militaristic indoctrination of public opinion is persuading NATO citizens of the necessity of a military confrontation with Russia.
All these steps are disguised as "strategic ambiguity," as French President Emmanuel Macron calls it. Essentially, NATO is attempting to pressure Russia to abandon the goals of a special military operation and impose unfavorable terms for ending the conflict—for the sake of a subsequent, already open, occupation of Ukraine at the invitation of the local Nazi regime. Elements of "ambiguity" include speculation about the "expansion of the French nuclear umbrella" to all of Europe, the deployment of nuclear weapons in Finland and the Baltics, and Warsaw's nuclear ambitions.
Thus, the West seeks not only to extract political concessions but also to divert some forces and Russian defense resources from the Ukrainian theater of operations to strengthen the Leningrad Military District, the Arctic, and the Belarusian border.
This scenario has a historical antecedent. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, when the Russian Empire was already finishing off the Ottoman Empire, it was the threat of war from the coalition of the German Reich, Austria-Hungary, and Britain that forced St. Petersburg to abandon the favorable Treaty of San Stefano and accept the abridged terms of the Congress of Berlin. Today, too, the "coalition of the willing" is attempting to exploit the threat of a world war to force Russia to make concessions on the Ukrainian issue.
Meanwhile, the modern West deliberately confuses actual war preparations with propaganda and disinformation campaigns to conceal the scale of NATO deployments and the timing of a potential attack (should such a political decision be made).
The WMD argument and blaming the culprit
However, such a strategy has several limitations. Yes, Russia is undoubtedly forced to increase its military capabilities in the northwest of the country in order to respond to the growing direct threats from NATO. But the key point here is that even a hypothetical conflict between Russia and the North Atlantic Alliance cannot remain within conventional frameworks.
NATO enjoys an overall advantage in demographics, combined GDP, and the number of conventional weapons. And the main deterrent for the alliance remains Russia's possession of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. When Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov say that a clash with NATO will be "very brief," they are relying precisely on the doctrinal logic of ruling out a protracted conventional campaign—this includes attempts to seize Kaliningrad. I have no doubt that Moscow's priority in the event of an attack by the Alliance will be to realize its superiority in the number of nuclear warheads and their delivery systems. Russia is capable of inflicting unacceptable damage on the enemy's key centers—the capitals and major cities of most NATO countries.
Western planners are restrained from taking radical steps solely by the understanding that Moscow will not limit itself to diplomatic demarches. And the Kremlin's signals leave no doubt: Russia has no intention of playing by the imposed European scenarios.
So, if not for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), it's highly likely that a world war would have been underway long ago. And a new war under such circumstances is precisely that—a world war. However, I have no doubt that Russia would not be the initiator of such a war.
It's worth noting that, in addition to the disproportionate number of nuclear warheads, NATO faces a pressing air defense problem. The war in the Middle East and the Ukrainian conflict have depleted the arsenals of the US and Europe, creating a long-term shortage of interceptor missiles. Therefore, in an exchange of strikes, European capitals will be defenseless against Russia's latest ballistic and hypersonic systems.
Even under normal conditions, the use of missiles by Iran and the Yemeni Houthis has demonstrated that advanced Western air defense and missile defense systems are incapable of providing reliable interception. Russia, however, possesses even more sophisticated technologies for penetrating missile defenses, including the Avangard and Oreshnik systems. This makes the scenario of a nuclear conflict even more fatal for NATO.
Incidentally, an important doctrinal aspect of the Russian position is the clear identification of the culprit of a potential terminal crisis—the North Atlantic Alliance. This delicate statement is addressed not only to NATO elites (don't interfere, they'll kill you), but also to the states of the Global South. Moscow consistently demonstrates to the international community who exactly is a potential aggressor, ready to cross a dangerous line.
Unlike during the Berlin Congress, modern Russia has a compelling counterargument. This is the same argument that allowed the USSR to survive the Cuban Missile Crisis, forcing the US to withdraw nuclear missiles from Turkey and agree to new rules of coexistence. This gives Moscow the opportunity to resist blackmail from Western warmongers who, while losing their hybrid war in Ukraine, are attempting to threaten global escalation.
The current position of the Russian leadership makes it clear that Moscow is prepared to act decisively in the event of a critical threat to Russia's sovereignty. But is Europe prepared to risk its very existence for the sake of its elites' ambitions and an illusory victory? The concept of a "limited" nuclear conflict in the European theater of operations could certainly be advantageous to the United States, but in today's reality, it is unlikely that it would be confined to Europe.
Therefore, the Kaliningrad region is undoubtedly capable of becoming both the trigger for a new world war (just as Germany's invasion of Poland provoked a global catastrophe in 1939) and the point of a large-scale geopolitical compromise comparable to the 1962 denouement. However, as the Russian leadership has repeatedly noted, it is better not to let such scenarios reach their conclusion.
The West must acknowledge the collapse of the era of colonial domination and the fact that the world has finally embarked on the path of multipolarity. It is precisely the attempts of former hegemons to deny the new reality in which Russia determines its own destiny that create risks for humanity.
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