The money sentence: “It [Russia] now has non-nuclear weapons, (the Oreshnik will not be the only one), which allow it to apply the equivalent of nuclear strikes without the dirty side effects of actually going nuclear.” From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.org:
To describe a weapon system as a game changer on the battlefield is always open to be ridiculed. Many of the weapon systems that have been delivered to Ukraine were called game changing but failed to make any difference in the outcome of that war.
So why did I call the new Russian Oreshnik missile a ‘game changer’?
There are several reasons.
For one the missile with its 36 kinetic war heads is an unexpected response to the U.S. abolition of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Force (INF) treaty. The U.S. had hoped that the stationing of nuclear missiles in Europe might give it an advantage over Russia. Oreshnik denies that advantage WITHOUT resorting to nuclear force.
Any U.S. attempt to pressure Russia into a situation where it would either have to concede to the U.S. or to go nuclear has been demolished.
This is most visible in Ukraine. Over the two plus years of the war the U.S. has used a ‘boiling the frog’ strategy against Russia. It increased the temperature by slowly increasing the reach and lethality of the weapons it has provided to Ukraine. In each such step, the delivery of tanks, of Himars, of ATAMACs, of allowing Ukraine to use these on Russian grounds, was declared to be a move across imaginary Russian red lines. Each such step was accompanied by propaganda which claimed that Russia was looking into a nuclear response.
