The war in Ukraine, which is entering its final phase, with Russian troops advancing steadily from the east and Ukrainian troops embattled in Kursk, has seen a dangerous escalation of missile attacks.

The unfolding events emphasise the nature of the Ukraine conflict as part of the US-led NATO war drive targeting Russia, and threatening to spark World War .

The timeline of recent events is simple: On 17 November, US officials announced that President Joe Biden had authorised Ukraine to use US-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) for attacks on Russian territory; ATACMS range of 300km can reach large parts of Western Russia, though fall well short of Moscow. This decision was in response to the allegation that 10,000 North Korean troops fight alongside Russian forces, although there has been no proof of this. The discourse echoes Nazi WWII propaganda depicting the Soviet Red Army as “Asiatic hordes”. The same trope was mobilised by the West German Christian Democratic party following World War Two as part of its anti-Communist propaganda.

The day following the US announcement, Ukraine fired at least six ATACMS into Russia, with president Volodymyr Zelensky commenting that “the missiles will speak for themselves”. Days later, Ukraine fired UK-made Storm Shadow missiles into Russia, reportedly killing Russian military personnel. To say that Ukraine fired the missiles is somewhat misleading. Both ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles can only be operated by British and US technicians, satellite intelligence and targeting programmers. While fired from Ukrainian territory and with Ukrainian involvement, this required the active participation of US and British imperialism. As Indian diplomatic observer, M K Bhadrakumar wrote in the New Indian Express on November 22: “Suffice to say, NATO/US has entered the Ukraine war directly.”

When such a missile crosses the border Russian defence analysts have split seconds to discern if it is a nuclear attack or not. If they make a wrong assessment, their response will be with nuclear weapons.

Russia responded to the Biden administration’s announcement with a decree formalising Putin’s September statement changing the country’s nuclear doctrine. Historically Russia, unlike the US, has had a no first strike policy. But the amended doctrine permits Russian use of nuclear weapons in the event of a “massive launch” of air strikes against Russia, where Russia is attacked by a non-nuclear country that is backed by a nuclear country. Ukraine, with its nuclear-armed backers the US, UK and France, would fit this criteria if any air strikes are considered be “massive”.

On 21 November, four days after the Biden Announcement, Russia  attacked the massive Yuzhmash missile plant in Dnipro using a Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile. This was the first time the missile has been used in combat, and sends a powerful message to Ukraine’s western controllers. The Oreshnik flies at such a speed that it super-heats the atmosphere around it to plasma. It is invisible to radar and the US currently has no ability to defend against it.

The Oreshnik missile is itself something of a measure of the long-term US aggression against post-Soviet Russia, culminating in the current military conflict on Ukrainian territory. In the 1987, under pressure from an international mass movement demanding nuclear disarmament the US Reagan administration accepted Mikhail Gorbachev’s offer to sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) Treaty with the Soviet Union. This complimented the earlier Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that limited defensive missile batteries. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s 2007 Yearbook the INF Treaty resulted in eliminating 2,692 missiles. In 2002, the US unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty. The Russian response, as ordered by Vladimir Putin was a build-up of Russia’s nuclear capabilities in response to the increased threat. By 2018, he announced in the Russian Federal Assembly that Russia had developed a number of technologically new “super weapons”.

Among them, Putin named the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, the Kinzhal hypersonic air-launched ballistic missile and the Sarmat liquid-fuelled, super-heavy intercontinental ballistic missile. Additionally, Russia is known to have developed the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Zircon scramjet-powered, anti-ship hypersonic cruise missile and the Poseidon autonomous underwater vehicle that can traverse entire oceans. According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Poseidon may possibly carry a 100 megaton atomic weapon, twice the size of the largest atomic bomb that has ever been exploded. The logic of the Poseidon is that it could enter a coastal city and destroy it, or it could explode off a coast and create a tsunami. Being automated it could be dispatched on its mission even if Russia were obliterated by US weaponry.

In February 2019, the Trump administration destroyed the INF Treaty by withdrawing the United States. US officials stated two reasons: an allegation that Russia had violated the Treaty; and that China had intermediate range missiles. The allegation against Russia had no foundation and the accusation against China was absurd. China has never been a party to the INF and its missiles are clearly designed for coastal defence.

Trump’s action was part of the long-term US strategy, accompanied by super-heated rhetoric, of encircling and threatening Russia, and from there to throttle China. The right-wing Center for European Policy Analysis think tank refers openly to “the Russo-Chinese led axis of anti-Western powers.”

As Lynn Rusten, an ex-senior director for arms control and non-proliferation at the National Security Council during the Obama administration and a vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, puts it, after the US ditched the INF Treaty: “We are heading into a direction we have not been in in 40 years: no arms control limits or rules that we are both following, and that is very dangerous.”

The day after the US scuttled the INF Treaty, Russia formally withdrew. Following that Russia re-purposed a previously mothballed intercontinental ballistic missile into the shorter range, hypersonic Oreshnik. Thus, we have arrived at a situation where the United States has fanned a proxy war in Ukraine and now discovers that the technological edge is, in this case at least, against them.

On 21 November, following the Oreshnik’s successful deployment, Putin gave a chilling warning to US strategists. He said Russia is developing intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles in response to US plans to produce and deploy intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. “We believe that the United States made a mistake by unilaterally destroying the INF Treaty in 2019 under a far-fetched pretext,” he said. “Today, the United States is not only producing such equipment, but, as we can see, it has worked out ways to deploy its advanced missile systems to different regions of the world, including Europe, during training exercises for its troops. Moreover, in the course of these exercises, they are conducting training for using them.” He went on: “We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against military facilities of those countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities, and in case of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond decisively and in mirror-like manner. I recommend that the ruling elites of the countries that are hatching plans to use their military contingents against Russia seriously consider this.”

Any US response to this is not public. However, it appears to not involve Joe Biden. Reuters News service reported on 22 November, immediately following the use of the Oreshnik, NATO chief Mark Rutte made an unpublicised visit to the U.S. Reportedly, Rutte flew on a Dutch government plane because the NATO chief does not have a personal aircraft, so NATO often rents planes from its alliance members.  Online flight trackers show the Dutch government plane landed in Florida. Presumably, Rutte visited President-elect Donald Trump at his residence in Florida.