This transcript appears in the September 13, 2024 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
What the Media Doesn’t Tell You: NATO Has Declared War on Russia
[Print version of this transcript]
This is an edited transcript of remarks Steven Starr delivered to a meeting of the International Peace Coalition on August 23, 2024.
It’s been a characteristic of U.S. nuclear policy for decades that the President can order a nuclear strike without consulting anyone. Dick Cheney made a joke about that some years ago. Russia, on the other hand, has very strict principles about the use of its nuclear weapons. In its policy paper, “Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence,” under the section, “The conditions specifying the possibility of nuclear weapons use by the Russian Federation,” it specifies: “attack by adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions.”
We’ve had a lot of that. We may not have heard about it in the news, but I think the news is blacked out in general in a lot of places, and it’s very selective in what it reports. But going back, even last year, there have been many serious attacks against Russian strategic sites:
December 2023: Drone attacks on two air bases where Russian Tu-95 long-range strategic nuclear bombers are based (Dyagilevo and Engels).
March 2024: Engels Air Base attacked again.
April 2024: Morozovsk airfield in Rostov region attacked; nuclear weapons are stored there.
April 2024: Engels air base attacked, again.
May 2024: Russian Early Warning System Radar in Krasnodar Krai region attacked by drones.
August 2024: Tu-95 airfield in Murmansk attacked, where long-range bombers are based. And also just in the last few days, there was a second attack.
August 2024: Second attack on Morozovsk; warehouse next to nuclear weapons hit.
The May attack on Russia’s Early Warning System—these attacks cannot be carried out without the benefit of the guidance of U.S. aerial reconnaissance and satellite information. That’s done in real time, because there’s a whole series of Russian air defense systems that they have to avoid—so the drones are programmed to go in sort of a slalom-like pathway to their targets. The Russians are very aware of this. Russia has only 10 of these early warning radar systems, and they almost completely depend on that for their early warning in the event of a nuclear attack. So this is a big deal if we start attacking that, because the Russians will consider this as a preliminary action before a U.S. nuclear attack on Russia.
The August attack in Morozovsk—this was also a really big deal. The strike occurred on an airbase in the Rostov Region. At the facility, there is a storage site where nuclear weapons are stored, and right next to it there was a fuel and munitions depot which was hit: It was wiped out.
So we start dropping bombs on a fuel and munitions storage facility right next to where nuclear weapons are stored? That’s a pretty serious aggravation, in my opinion.
Further down in Russia’s policy paper on nuclear deterrence, it describes the conditions under which “threats of aggression” qualify to be neutralized by the implementation of its nuclear deterrence. These include “deployment by states which consider the Russian Federation as a potential adversary, of missile defense systems and medium- and shorter-range cruise and ballistic missiles, non-nuclear high-precision and hypersonic weapons, strike unmanned aerial vehicles, and drones and directed energy weapons.”
The colored map on this page illustrates the ranges that three U.S.-supplied weapon systems (the Army Tactical Missile System, ATACMS; the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System; and the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb) can strike into Russia. If you recall, Biden gave his approval for Ukraine to use these, as long as it was just certain areas in Russia. But you can see how far into Russia from Ukraine these weapons can hit.
Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe with six reactors, was recently hit by a drone attack. So nuclear power plants are now coming under attack.
Zelensky has said that the Kursk invasion shows that Russia’s red lines are really all bluff. But this idea also reflects what is coming from Washington, as far as I can see. Apparently, there are no more red lines for Washington, because they think Russia will back down. I’ve read this mantra coming out of Washington for a while. A good friend of mine, Greg Mello, who is always there lobbying, says he hears this all the time when he goes to meet with people.
This has only escalated over the previous days and weeks. Ukraine launched one of the largest-ever drone attacks against Moscow on August 21. And in Kursk, there are so many mercenaries from NATO countries along with NATO weapons and ammunition, that this is basically a NATO invasion of Russia.
So, we’ve gone from not sending tanks or offensive weapons, to sending tanks, F-16s, and long-range missiles, and now we’ve just actually reported an invasion into Russia.
Now I’d like to finish with excerpts from interviews with two people that will explain this better than I can. The first is Gilbert Doctorow:
What has changed is the nature of the war, as the Russians see it. And I’m going to be speaking of the Russian perspective on this war, not my own perspective or Western perspective, but precisely the Russian perspective. Which is, that from the moment of the invasion, that’s called incursion, but now it’s really an invasion of Russian territory proper by Ukrainian forces, the Russians see in this a NATO attack on Russia.
Now, why did they see this? Because they know for certain the move into Kursk, the move across the border into Russian Federation territory, was under discussion and planning between Ukrainian military and their backers or puppeteers in the West, in the United States and particularly in Britain, for more than a year. So they are also considering that there are numbers of NATO officers—whether they are wearing NATO uniforms or are dressed up as Ukrainian forces, is irrelevant—if there are NATO officers who are conducting on the ground, and of course, remotely, what is going on day-by-day in the incursion. So, from the standpoint of Russians, this is a NATO invasion.
And the next is Scott Ritter:
NATO invaded Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy. Let me just say it one more time so you understand the gravity of what I’m saying: NATO invaded Russia. The heartland of Russia, Kursk. NATO invaded. Has it sunk in yet, what I’ve just said? That’s a game-changing event. Forget anything you thought about this before: It’s over! It’s done! Ukraine is dead! That’s the only outcome now. Ukraine is dead.
Now, the question is, does the West want to die, alongside it?
So, I think Scott Ritter could say it better than I could. But that’s where we are now. That’s the situation that we don’t hear about in our media, but what they think in Russia.
