German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s revelation that the West removed all restrictions on the range of the weapons that they supplied to Ukraine brought about a feeling of déjà vu from late last year. Russia warned them against doing this at the time, the moment of truth finally arrived once they defied it, and then Putin climbed the escalation ladder by authoring the use of a hitherto top-secret hypersonic medium-range Oreshnik missile against Ukraine. History might therefore be about to repeat itself.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the West’s reported decision as “quite dangerous”, while Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov assessed that it was evidently “made quite some time ago and kept under wraps”, which aligns with what Merz himself later claimed when clarifying his comments. Nevertheless, this policy has yet to result in any strategically significant attacks, let alone reshape the conflict’s dynamics in Ukraine’s favor. If that changes, however, then Russia might drop more Oreshniks.
This could happen even in the absence of those two scenario triggers. Trump ominously posted on Tuesday that “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”. This follows his post about how “[Putin] has gone absolutely CRAZY!”, which was analyzed here as proof of him being maliciously misinformed by his trusted advisors and/or him creating the pretext for US escalation.
It’s therefore clear that Trump is preparing for the possibility that peace talks might soon collapse, in advance of which he’s trying to spin a self-serving narrative. By denigrating Putin as “crazy” and implying that “bad things..REALLY BAD” might soon happen to Russia, Trump is signaling tacit approval of forthcoming Ukrainian provocations. Other than the use of long-range American missiles against strategic targets, this could take the form of a nationwide assassination-terrorism campaign.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that Russia blamed Ukraine for spring 2024’s Crocus terrorist attack, accused it of plotting to assassinate Putin during last July’s Naval Day parade in St. Petersburg, and just revealed that a swarm of their drones tried to take down his helicopter during last week’s visit to Kursk. Moreover, Trump was suspiciously silent after Zelensky implicitly threatened to attack Moscow’s Victory Day parade, so it’s possible that he might finally “let Ukraine loose” even if he walks away from the conflict.
In the event that Ukraine’s long-range Western missiles strike strategically significant targets and/or a nationwide assassination-terrorism campaign is commenced, especially if there’s any credible threat to Putin or other senior officials, then Russia might retaliate by dropping more Oreshniks. It’s holding back for the time being, apparently to avoid provoking Trump into crossing the Rubicon through the abovementioned means, but it’ll have no more reason to remain restrained if he ends up doing that first.
All told, Russian-US relations could soon deteriorate depending on what Ukraine does, especially if the Kremlin concludes that it’s with a wink and a nod from America. There’s no way that Russia won’t respond if Ukraine escalates the conflict. This could very likely take the form of more Oreshnik strikes, which could in turn be exploited by Trump as the pretext for more direct US escalation. Step by step, Trump is turning “Sleepy Joe Biden’s War” into his own, exactly as Steve Bannon warned him not to do.
