We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that we do not have to live this way.

—Bob Avakian

Last week Revolution wrote that the war in Ukraine “continues to lurch into an even more dangerous and destructive phase.” Over the past several days the peril of direct war between U.S./NATO forces and Russian forces has increased significantly. This is extremely dangerous.

Before getting into that, though, some background:

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. This followed years of the U.S. developing a foothold within Ukraine, and the increasing prospect of Ukraine joining the U.S.-dominated military alliance of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, made up of 31 European countries and the U.S.). The U.S. immediately funneled billions of dollars of arms, as well as a great deal of “strategic advice,” into Ukraine. The war became a “proxy war” between the U.S. and NATO and Russia over which imperialist bloc would dominate Ukraine.

There has not been direct combat between the two powers—though with these new developments, that could quickly change. And this is important: Direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia holds the extreme danger of the conflict spiraling out into a nuclear conflict.

Ukraine’s Military Position Weakens

Ukraine’s military position in its proxy war with Russia has gotten much worse. Russian forces are advancing into the vicinity of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, and along Ukraine’s southeastern border. U.S. electronic weaponry that was supposed to enable Ukraine to defend against Russian missile and drone assaults “have failed in mission after mission in Ukraine, taken down by Russian electronic warfare.”

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, attributes Ukraine’s weakening situation largely to its inability to fire U.S.-made weapons directly into Russia. He says this gives Russia a “huge advantage.” But up to now, Genocide Joe “I’ll-bleed-Russia-dry-to-the-last-Ukrainian” Biden has maintained a policy that avoids direct use of U.S. forces in Ukraine. He also hasn’t allowed Ukraine to fire U.S.-made weapons into Russia. The worry is that if U.S. weaponry is not just used for defense within Ukraine’s borders but offensively strikes Russia, the Russians would view that as a whole other thing. And it would be—it would be a direct attack on the Russian territory utilizing U.S. weapons provided by the U.S. In recognition of that, Biden has up to now said doing so could instigate “World War 3.”

Mounting Pressure on U.S. to Raise the Stakes

But now, it seems, the possibility of the U.S. taking that risk—with all the death and devastation that could entail—is increasingly likely. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned from recent meetings with Zelensky, reportedly carrying a “sobering message” about Ukraine’s difficulties. The New York Times reported that since Blinken’s return, “pressure is mounting on the United States to help Ukraine target Russian military sites” to prevent further Russian advances. The U.S. is also considering putting U.S. forces on the ground in Ukraine, to train Ukrainian soldiers in modern warfare. 

The U.S.’s NATO allies Britain and France both argue that Ukraine “absolutely has the right to strike back at Russia,” as David Cameron, formerly the British Prime Minister, said. In fact, Britain already allows Ukraine to use missiles it supplies to strike targets in Russian territory. And Victoria Nuland, who for years was a top official in the U.S. State Department focused on Ukraine, recently told ABC News that “if attacks are coming directly from over the line in Russia… those bases ought to be fair game” for U.S. provided weaponry. Nuland said, “I think it’s time for that because Russia has obviously escalated this war… So I think it is time to give the Ukrainians more help hitting these bases inside Russia.”

Russia Makes Threats of Its Own

In this overheated and explosive environment, Russia on May 21 released video of major troop exercises near its border with Ukraine. According to The Hill, the exercises demonstrated Russia’s readiness “for the potential deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield.” The video showed troops placing missiles and warheads onto fighter jets, and the backs of trucks with missile-firing systems. 

Russia’s Ministry of Defense issued a press release saying that “The ongoing exercise is aimed at maintaining the readiness of personnel and equipment of units for the combat use of non-strategic nuclear weapons to respond and in order to unconditionally ensure the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Russian state in response to provocative statements and threats of individual Western officials against the Russian Federation.” Translation: “We hear your threats, and we are readying our nukes for any attack on what we regard as our ‘territorial integrity.’”

So-called “tactical” nuclear weapons like those Russia displayed have a lower “yield” (explosive power) than “strategic” nuclear weapons. They are sometimes called “battlefield” nuclear weapons, as if the death and destruction they bring will be limited to combatants in immediate range of their impact—which is horrible enough. The truth is, “[T]hey still can carry up to 100 kilotons of yield, much higher than the U.S. bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Their use would be a qualitative escalation of this war, with horrific destruction. They also could spiral this war, and the world, into an all-out battle between nuclear-armed capitalist-imperialist powers for world supremacy. The toll of such a conflict is incalculable.

As Bob Avakian pointed out: 

The actual reality… is that the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in the context of the war in Ukraine—even “tactical” nuclear weapons—would lead to a massively destructive response by the U.S./NATO. And even if that U.S./NATO response itself were non-nuclear, it would very likely provoke a further escalation by Russia. This dynamic could very easily lead to strategic nuclear war between the two sides, with the prospect of wiping out human civilization as we know it.