A surreal atmosphere currently loiters over Europe: a strange disconnect between festive preparations (Christmas is just a month away) and the content of TV news bulletins and posts on social media. On the streets and in the shopping malls, a sense of Yuletide routine prevails. The decorations are going up; Black Friday promotions are inaugurating the Western world’s annual bonanza of consumption; the goose (or turkey) is getting fat. It is all too easy for Europeans to revel in the moment, to relinquish their critical faculties and yield to the mirage of “normality”.
All the same, for warier and more politically attuned citizens there is no escaping an accelerating sense of unease and foreboding.
On November 17, US President Joe Biden, already noted for his readiness to cross red lines for Israel, authorised Ukraine to deploy ATACMS surface-to-surface ballistic missiles against Russia. In the days since then, Europe has become the epicentre of a rapidly building military escalation. For the first time in decades, the prospect of conflict between industrialised, nuclear-armed states is on the agenda.
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The day after Biden’s pronouncement, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, eager to burnish Britain’s reputation as the US’ most stalwart ally, declared he would not rule out allowing Ukraine to use UK-made Anglo-French Storm Shadow cruise missiles for strikes inside Russia. With a range of about 250 km (150 miles), these weapons partly rely on US navigational data and other technology and require a sign-off from Washington, DC, for their deployment.
Also on November 18, France’s current Foreign Minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, fell into line by reiterating French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement back in May that Paris was open to consider greenlighting the use of its missiles to strike on Russian soil. “Nothing new under the sun,” he quipped ahead of a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers in Brussels. “There are no red lines in France’s support for Ukraine.”
First ATACMS attack inside Russia
The following day, November 19, Russia reported that Ukraine had deployed six ATACMS ballistic missiles in an overnight attack on a “facility” in the Bryansk region, just across Ukraine’s northern border with Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin responded by giving the go-ahead for a major revision to his government’s nuclear doctrine. Under the terms of the updated policy, Russia has placed on record its readiness to launch nuclear missiles in response to an attack on its territory by a non-nuclear-armed state that has the backing of a nuclear-armed one.
Undeterred (or immune to any sense of caution), UK Defence Secretary John Healey called his Ukrainian counterpart that same evening (on November 19) to say that Ukraine could also fire British Storm Shadow missiles into Russia. Within hours, the first batch—thought to number 12—was unleashed on a village in Russia’s Kursk region, the cross-border area where Ukrainian troops are currently in retreat after a failed incursion earlier this year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on October 29, 2024. On November 21, Russia ratcheted up tensions further by carrying out an intermediate-range ballistic missile strike on a Ukrainian missile plant in Dnipro, deploying for the first time an experimental new hypersonic missile system. | Photo Credit: MIKHAIL METZEL VIA REUTERS
‘Oreshnik’: Russia’s new hypersonic missile system
On November 21, Russia ratcheted up tensions a further, mind-numbing notch. It carried out an intermediate-range ballistic missile strike on a Ukrainian missile plant in Dnipro, deploying for the first time an experimental new hypersonic missile system. Hours after the strike, Putin, in a TV address, said that Russia had launched a “new conventional intermediate-range” missile with the codename “Oreshnik” (hazel tree in Russian) and that the test had been successful. The new weapon, he said, travelled at a speed of Mach 10, or 2.5–3 km per second (10 times the speed of sound), and that “there are currently no ways of counteracting” it. Speaking a day later to senior defence officials, he said tests of the missile, which is capable of carrying a nuclear payload, would continue, “including in combat conditions.”.
Ukrainian military intelligence sources have since estimated that the inaugural Oreshnik travelled at Mach 11, taking just 15 minutes to arrive from the launch site, more than 1,000 km (620 miles) away in the Astrakhan region of Russia. The missile was equipped with six warheads, each with six sub-munitions, but carried no explosive devices—at least this time.
Russia’s warning to the West could hardly be presented in starker terms. But will it be heeded?
To date, there is little to suggest any modification in the supremely reckless course currently being pursued by Washington, DC and its NATO allies. If escalation might seem in line with the “logic” of the West’s no-holds-barred support for Ukraine, in place since Russia’s 2022 invasion, there is a decidedly wanton and capricious quality about the decisions being taken by a lame duck US President in his dwindling days of office. While the addition of several thousand North Korean troops to Russia’s fighting capability is being cited as reason enough for pushing the planet to the brink of World War III, the general belief—in the US and elsewhere—is that the Biden administration is deliberately escalating its proxy war in Ukraine ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. The reckoning seems to be that, in the context of relentless Russian advances on Ukraine’s eastern front and the recapture of large swathes of Kursk territory, NATO penetration of Russian territory with cutting edge, “we’re so superior to you” advanced weaponry will strengthen Ukraine’s bargaining position while queering the pitch for Trump and his team.
A ‘make-believe’ war
This adds another layer of dishonesty and chutzpah to what from the very start has been a “make-believe” war. Back in February 2022, people in the West were led to believe that Russia, purportedly crippled by a basket-case economy and an under-equipped, poorly motivated military, would quickly succumb. Now, close to three years on, the fanciful nature of this scenario and the enormity of its human and financial costs are evident to everyone bar the wielders of power, the armchair warriors cheering on a limitless, “unto death” continuation of hostilities.
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Across Europe and within Ukraine itself, opinion polls reveal a pervasive yearning for peace among the population at large. This helps explain the reluctance of one of NATO’s key European players, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to participate in the current escalation. On November 15, Scholz broke ranks by having an hour-long telephone conversation with Putin, the first contact between the two leaders for two years. His continuing refusal to authorise Ukraine’s use of German Taurus cruise missiles within Russia aligns him with public opinion: according to a recent poll conducted for Germany’s ARD TV channel, 61 per cent of German voters oppose such a deployment. Unlike his counterparts in London and Paris, Scholz is facing elections early next year following the collapse of his coalition government.
Meanwhile, Russia has reportedly begun the mass production of mobile nuclear shelters capable of protecting people from nuclear explosions or radioactive contamination. For those of us who lived through the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Christmas 2024 is becoming a déjà vu moment, rekindling existential fears we hoped never to experience again.
Susan Ram has spent much of her life viewing the world from different geographical locations. Born in London, she studied politics and international relations before setting off for South Asia: first to Nepal, and then to India, where fieldwork in Tamil Nadu developed into 20 years of residence.
