Wake up Europe! Russian Oreshnik missiles are here!

More than 1000 days into the war in Ukraine and 2 months before the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, an unprecedented escalation between Russia and NATO has begun.

The origin of this escalation dates back to August 6, 2024 when the Ukrainian army invaded the Kursk oblast on Russian territory.

The purpose of this incursion was to lure the Russian army into the Kursk oblast in order to weaken its presence in the Donetsk, which is important militarily, geopolitically, economically and culturally, for both Russia and Ukraine.

The Kursk Oblast was a weak point of the Russian defenses on the 2,295 km long land and sea border with Ukraine. The control of the city of Mariupol and the Crimean Peninsula has been one of the priorities of the Russian state for several reasons, being the maritime control of the Sea of Azov, and its presence in the Black Sea, which it shares with Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia, spearheads in Russia’s military strategy against NATO. The Black Sea Fleet is a wall protecting Russia from the sea and a spear capable of piercing the enemy’s flank for thousands of kilometers with ballistic missile submarines.

To regain control of Kursk, Russia has built up in recent weeks 50,000 troops, including some 12,000 North Korean troops, as confirmed on October 28 by Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General. These soldiers represent Moscow’s first barrier to the southwest.

Ukraine’s attack on Russia’s Bryansk region on November 19 with ATACMS missiles and on November 21 with Storm Shadow missiles (with the approval of the United States and the United Kingdom), occurred 390 km from Moscow, something Russia considered as a direct NATO attack using Ukraine as a dagger approaching its heart. Russia’s first response was immediate, announcing that same day a major change in its nuclear doctrine that empowers the Russian President to push the nuclear button more easily.

The second response occurred at the military level on November 21 with an attack against one of the facilities of the Ukrainian defense industrial complex in Dnipro with one Oreshnik hypersonic missile from the city of Astrakhan, in southern Russia. This new ballistic missile has an intermediate range up to 5500 km, travels at about 3 km per second (10 times the speed of sound), and cannot be intercepted by any defense system in the world. Although the one launched on Ukrainian territory was non-nuclear, they can carry six nuclear warheads with an estimated yield of 100 to 500 kilotons.

At that speed, an Oreshnik missile launched from Moscow can reach Kiev in about 4 minutes and Paris and London in about 14 minutes.

In an unannounced nuclear attack by Russia, not only would the civilian population in any country in Europe be caught unawares and without time to reach a safe shelter, but even government workers, from the lowest to the highest echelons, could find themselves in dire straits.

The population of the Scandinavian countries is the best prepared for these scenarios, however an Oreshnik missile would arrive in Helsinki from Moscow in just 5 minutes.

Even a city like Lisbon, about 4500 km from Moscow, would be within range of an Oreshnik missile. The missile would reach the Portuguese capital in about 19 minutes.

With the recent order given by President Putin for the serial production of these missiles, European countries, both governments and civilians, must be aware of the possible nuclear consequences of an uncontrolled escalation of the conflict. The rest of the European countries must follow the example of the Scandinavian countries in terms of preparing for a nuclear attack.

European governments must provide sufficient nuclear shelters for their citizens and all the basic needs to survive at least the first few days after radioactive fallout. Then they will have to deal with the other consequences of a nuclear war. The Russian government has already started with the massive protection of mobile nuclear shelters in its main cities.

These two months remaining until President Donald Trump’s inauguration could be the longest months in modern human history, or they could be the shortest.
Everything will depend on the political decisions taken by the leaders of the NATO countries, Ukraine and Russia, and on the decisions taken by them on the battlefield.

NATO nuclear missiles will eventually reach Moscow and other Russian cities if Russia attacks first. The Russian population must prepare itself in the same way. The rest of the countries around the world will have to carry the heavy burden of global economic collapse, environmental pollution, nuclear winter and food crisis for an unknown period of time.