Putin has threatened escalation against the West.

On Thursday evening, President Vladimir Putin addressed the Russian people on the escalation of the Ukraine War. Putin vowed to strike military facilities of countries that use their weapons against Russian facilities and warned that “in case of escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond resolutely in a mirror way.” Putin also decried the increasingly “global character” of the Ukraine War and blamed the West for this trend.

Putin’s incendiary comments should be taken with a big grain of salt. Since Russian Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn warned of a nuclear attack on Poland over its hosting of US missile shield rockets in 2008, the Kremlin has used apocalyptic threats as an instrument of deterrence.

Russia’s purchase of Iranian drones and recruitment of North Korean troops paved the way for the Ukraine War’s globalisation. To turn the tables fully on the West is a fallacious whataboutism. Especially as Ukraine is exclusively using Nato-class weaponry against military targets and Russia is using its imported weapons against civilian areas.

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That said, we should be cognisant of the escalatory spiral we find ourselves in. By allowing Ukraine to use ATACM and Storm Shadow long-range missiles to strike Russian territory, the US and Britain are arguably becoming parties to the conflict. The Pentagon’s impending deployment of US military contractors to repair weapons systems and Britain’s deliberations on sending military trainers to Ukraine augment this contention.

An intermeshed Nato-Ukraine alliance bloc is facing off against a congealing Russia-China-Iran-North Korea authoritarian axis. This brings back memories of World War I. The gradual hardening of alliances converted a seemingly small-scale provocation, the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, into a massive European war.

The risk of a repeat scenario looms large, as the parameters of acceptable escalation continue to widen and hostilities between rival alliance blocs globalise.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there has been an alarming lack of consensus on what constitutes a legitimate military target. Russia’s use of arson attacks on industrial facilities in Europe, assassination attempts against pro-Ukraine figures and terrorism plots against civilian airliners put us on a slippery slope. The conversion of nuclear energy facilities into frontline combat theatres underscores the severe erosion of the protocols surrounding military targeting.

During the first week of the Ukraine War, Russia occupied the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). While Ukraine recaptured Chernobyl in April 2022, attacks on the ZNPP persist. On April 15, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi warned “We are getting dangerously close to a nuclear accident.”

If Ukraine launches ATACM strikes on Russian energy facilities that help finance the war, Russia could asymmetrically target the ZNPP. If radiation emanating from ZNPP spills into Poland, Article 5 may need to be invoked and a Russia-Nato confrontation could follow.

The destruction of the post-Cold War arms control regime further raises the risk of escalation. The US’s October 2018 withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty over Russian non-compliance and the Kremlin’s suspension of participation in the February 2023 New START treaty were serious blows to conflict governance Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s support for the use of low-yield nuclear weapons use after Ukraine’s October 2022 triumph in Lyman and Kremlin advisor Sergey Karaganov’s incessant calls for a Hiroshima-style nuclear strike in Europe risk normalizing nuclear warfare.

Russia’s revisions to its nuclear doctrine, which followed Ukraine’s ATACM attack on Bryansk, codify what was already being feverishly discussed in the Kremlin’s inner sanctum.

The diverse inter-related array of provocations by Western adversaries raises the stakes further. In recent weeks, North Korea test-fired an ICBM, China intensified its Air defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) violations around Taiwan and Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles against Israel. These provocations are intensifying as US adversaries capitalise on President Joe Biden’s lame duck status and try to complicate President-elect Donald Trump’s less predictable agenda. And they are occurring in concert not in a lone-wolf fashion.

From Russia’s facilitation of Houthi targeting of Western commercial vessels to provocative Sino-Russian military drills that could soon include North Korea, an authoritarian axis is crystallising. An intensified Russia-Nato conflict over Ukraine could cause a disastrous escalatory chain reaction in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific regions.

The West should stand strong against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. But this principled stance comes with grave risks that we must heed.

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