Ragnorok Part XIV -- Escalation

Things are hearing up quickly in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. I saw a meme from the Babylon Bee a week or two ago stating that the Democrats had come up with a new way to keep Trump from taking office: starting World War III. It may have been prophetic.

    Earlier this week, the Biden Administration authorized Ukraine to use US-supplied longer range missiles--the the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMs--for deeper strikes inside Russia. Which Ukraine promptly did, striking a Russian arsenal near the town of Karachev in the Bryansk region of Russia. This is not the first time Ukraine has used ATACMs against Russian military targets (that would have been earlier this spring) but it apparently was the first to strike inside Russia proper. 

    In an interesting move, the Biden Administration has also authorized the provision of anti-personnel mines to the Ukrainians. The shift in policy with land mines, the article reports, "is needed to stymie recent Russian advances against the Ukrainian front lines, according to the official."

    Ukraine officials now claim that Russia has retaliated by lobbing an ICBM (albeit with a conventional warhead) at a target in Ukraine (although U.S. officials dispute that, claiming it was "only" an experimental intermediate range ballistic missile). But whatever it was, "it appeared to be a nuclear-capable weapon that carried multiple warheads, in a further escalation of the 33-month-old war."

    Concurrently, Russian President Putin has revised its nuclear attack doctrine. "The updated doctrine now states that Russia will consider as a joint attack any attack from a nonnuclear country backed by a nuclear power," Politico reports. The new doctrine "also noted that the country could retaliate with nuclear force to a conventional weapons attack that threatens its sovereignty." Russia is also unhappy with the U.S. opening a new ballistic missile defense base in Poland on November 13.

    Meanwhile, "[s]ecret documents revealed Wednesday that Berlin has begun making plans for how it could help deploy as many as 800,000 NATO troops — including Americans — into Ukraine as Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling reaches new heights." 

    Finally, it appears that China may be interjecting itself into the conflict (again). Authorities believe that the Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 was involved in the damage of two subsea communication cables in the Baltic Sea earlier this week. The ship appears to be detained by Dutch forces currently while the matter is investigated. Nevertheless, the whole thing is reminiscent of an incident almost a year ago when a Hong Kong flagged ship, the NewNew Polar Bear, apparently dragged one of its anchors for hundreds of kilometers through Finnish waters, ripping up an undersea gas pipeline. In that case, however, the ship had left the scene before authorities realized what had happened. 

    One of the things that has always puzzled me in this conflict is the why of it. It has always seemed faintly ridiculous to assume that Putin had any interest in reconstituting the Soviet Empire. Even when considering the more general invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the conflict always appeared to me to be primarily about Russia protecting its ability to access and use its bases at Sevastopol in the Crimea rather than an attempt to take all of Ukraine; and, frankly, if Ukraine had not cut off water to Crimea, this would still be a low level conflict between Ukraine and its breakaway regions. But is there a spiritual dimension to all of this? Is this conflict intended by dark, spiritual powers to eliminate or reduce a certain broad group of people? Because the only peoples directly involved in this conflict are those in North America and Europe (including western Russia).