According to foreign media reports, the routine nuclear deterrence exercise with NATO code-named as "firm noon" officially began. The exercise locations are held over Belgium , North Sea and over the UK. More than 60 fighter jets from NATO 14 countries will participate in the exercise, including the strategic bomber B-52H, which was sent from the United States from the mainland.
Coincidentally, according to Russia's routine military exercises, Russia will also hold a three-army nuclear deterrence exercise including nuclear submarine , strategic bombers, and intercontinental missile forces in late October. Foreign media are worried that Russia may "for tooth" and hold a nuclear exercise with NATO at the same time.
Although both NATO and Russia have announced that the nuclear deterrence exercise is only a "routine" training task and has nothing to do with the current Russian-Ukrainian war. NATO also added a special sentence: There will be no live ammunition during the exercise.
However, in the situation where the Russian-Ukrainian war has clearly escalated, NATO has not temporarily suspended this year's routine nuclear deterrence exercise as previously called for by some European media, at least indicating that NATO is unwilling to make any "weakness" move that is conducive to the easing of the Russian-Ukrainian situation under the current situation. This is a kind of fuel to the fire for the Russian-Ukrainian war itself.
war has reached this level. Russia has partially mobilized and announced that it will use all means to defend the newly incorporated "four state territories" into Russia. Ukraine is recklessly counterattacking. It can be said that both sides have chosen to "increase their investment".
At this time, NATO, as the "backer" to support Ukraine and is also a third party that has nothing to do with this war, was originally the only force that could make concessions to ease the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
To put it bluntly, now that is a territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine, it is the most irreconcilable contradiction between countries. Neither Putin nor Zeliansky can bear the historical responsibility of losing the four eastern states of Ukraine. Therefore, even if you know that you will continue to fight, you will likely be burned together, and Russia and Ukraine cannot make any concessions.
But NATO is different, NATO is at least on the surface a third party in this war. The Ukrainian territory was taken away by Russia, which is not an undestructible core interest for NATO, so they can make concessions on this matter.
And Ukraine can continue to fight, obviously relying on NATO. If NATO doesn't want to fight, then even if Ukraine loses its territory, Zelensky can turn the blame on NATO, saying that NATO's failure to support it caused the four eastern Ukrainian states to be recaptured.
Although this is also difficult to explain to history, it at least gave Zelensky and Ukrainian a step.
The reality is very cruel. Ukraine just cannot defeat Russia. The four eastern Ukrainian states are merged into Russian territory, which is likely to become a fait accompli and difficult to change. Under such objective conditions, letting NATO take responsibility is an acceptable compromise for both Russia and Ukraine.
But now, NATO is holding a nuclear deterrence exercise at a sensitive moment, clearly telling Russia that they have no intention of compromising and that they really want to fight Ukraine to the "last man".
For Putin, this is forcing Russia to expand the scope of special military operations and invest more manpower and material resources to achieve victory.
And when Russia is involved in a "full war", it is necessary to raise its own terms of peace talks. The reason is simple, "When I sent 100,000 people to beat you, as long as you choose to be neutral and don't follow others to beat me, we can negotiate." But when 1 million people are sent to mobilize the entire country to fight you, it is not just a neutral matter, at least a pro-Russian government has to come to power and solve the problem once and for all.
For Ukraine, the more harsh Russia fights, the greater the losses Ukraine suffers, and the less room for peace talks the current Ukrainian government has.
Therefore, although this NATO nuclear deterrence exercise is just a routine exercise and does not carry live ammunition, the impact on the Russian-Ukrainian war is not much different from the special nuclear deterrence to Russia.
From the perspective of nuclear strategy itself, before NATO's routine nuclear deterrence exercise, Russia had at least two steps to really use nuclear weapon . The first is the nuclear deterrence exercise, and the second is to commit nuclear bomb in an unmanned area to verify the power of nuclear weapons. If neither of these two steps can scare the West, then the next step may be a real nuclear attack.
Now, the war between NATO is tense. After Russia threatened to use "all means" to defend its territory, it announced a "routine" nuclear deterrence exercise. Russia must be tough, which is equivalent to inexplicably offsetting the "nuclear deterrence exercise" buffering step before using nuclear weapons.
Next, Russia has only one buffer left before the steps to use nuclear weapons, which is obviously bad news for global security.
To sum up, with the development of the Russian-Ukrainian war, although both Russia and the United States say that they will not use nuclear weapons, the sharp confrontation between the two sides at the reality level and their unyielding attitude will inevitably lead to a surge in the probability of direct conflict between Russia and NATO, and the possibility of nuclear weapons being used is getting bigger and bigger.
NATO's so-called routine nuclear deterrence exercise seems to be protecting its own "face", but in fact it is an irresponsible manifestation.
