Dmitry Orlov

By now lots of political pundits and commentators, not to mention some number of YouTube talking heads and a fair number of armchair geopoliticians, have noticed that something new is afoot in Russia; namely, the Russians are no longer content to sit quietly and watch their citizens, including, recently, a dormitory full of sleeping young women in training to become primary school teachers, get blasted to spam by drone aircraft supplied by the Europeans and launched by the Ukrainians. The proper response, many Russians are now thinking, is to “whack” the Europeans. For the students of Russian, the new vocabulary word is “жахнуть” (zhakhnut’). It can be loosely translated as “to blow to smithereens,” perhaps with a nuke.

Whacking the Ukrainians themselves isn’t effective. They are no longer masters of their own destiny. They have formed some sort of a death cult and helping them join the crowd invisible, as Russia is currently doing at an average of 1500 dead Ukrainian soldiers a day, does not seem effective in dissuading some of the rest from launching terrorist attacks against Russian civilians. The trick, then, is to dissuade the Europeans from supplying the Ukrainians with lethal toys, and then the question is one of target selection and choice of ordnance: where to whack, and what to whack with. This is a surprisingly hot topic of discussion within Russia, from passengers on rural busses to supposed “Kremlin propagandists” in gleaming television studios. All of this should cause at least a few thoughtful people in the West to think deeply about the consequences of all of this and perhaps even to consider ways to avert getting whacked by angry Russians.

Rest assured that the question of “What to whack with?” is being considered at the very top. Below is an extended quote from Vladimir Putin’s comments at the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Forum about Russia’s new Oreshnik missile system, of which he is clearly a major fan. “Oreshnik”, by the way, is Russian for “European hazel nut tree.” It is quite traditional for Russian weapons systems to have such vegetarian names. The name is apt because the weapon, just as the tree, delivers not one but many handfuls of nuts. In its non-nuclear form, each of these “nuts” most likely consists of tungsten cones or rods, each weighing about a tonne. Tungsten is significantly denser than lead and has a boiling point of 5,660ºC.

“Dozens of warheads, homing warheads, attack the target at a speed of Mach 10, which is about three kilometers per second. The temperature of the warheads reaches 4,000ºC. If my memory serves me correctly, the surface of the sun is 5,500-6,000ºC. Therefore, everything at the epicenter of the explosion is fragmented into elementary particles, essentially turning into dust. The missile can strike even highly protected targets located at great depth. According to military and technical experts, if these missiles were used en masse, in a single strike—that is, several “Nuts”—in a cluster, the force of the strike would be comparable to that of a nuclear weapon. Although the Oreshnik missile is certainly not a weapon of mass destruction. Firstly, because—as confirmed by the November 21 test—it is a high-precision weapon, and secondly, and most importantly, there is no nuclear warhead, meaning no nuclear contamination after its use.”

This weapon has been battle tested in the former Ukraine with satisfactory results. Here is Putin again, speaking of these tests:

“To be honest, I’ll reveal a major military secret: [we] simply struck where it was convenient to observe the results. This applies to Belaya Tserkov’ [near Kiev], and even more so to the [Ukrainian-occupied Donetsk People’s Republic] area within the perimeter of the main fortified area. Our drones then flew in there, [over] the barn they hit, and simply observed how where separate warheads had landed, calculating everything down to the millimeter.”

This is the choice weapon, then, for “whacking” Europe: it is non-nuclear, it is exceedingly precise, and it turns to dust the exact location that is targeted without damaging the surrounding area except for blown-out windows, burst eardrums and, if the population is prone to panic, some amount of panic. Russia’s Ministry of Defense has already published a list of sites all over Europe, plus a few in Turkey and in Israel, where Ukrainian drones or components thereof are produced. Russia would be within its rights under international law to strike these targets since they are being used to supply terrorists.

The question is, Will this work? Will European leaders, seeing a few of their military factories destroyed, suddenly turn peaceful and from then on cease and desist from supplying the Kiev regime with weapons with which to terrorize Russian civilians? Or will they be greatly encouraged by these strikes to accelerate their own rearmament campaigns? Europe’s leaders have a problem: they need to oversee a decrease in the European standard of living of as much as a factor of two while maintaining control.

To this end, declaring a permanent state of emergency would be most helpful. An Oreshnik strike on a handful of locations would serve as an excuse for imposing strict totalitarian control over the population. The opposition, some of which is timidly voicing opinions in favor of restoring relations with Russia, would be permanently silenced. Every government within the EU would be ordered to prepare for war with Russia. Ukrainian terrorist efforts would be stepped up and other marginal Europeans (Finland, the Baltics, Poland, Moldova) would be put under pressure to join the fray.

Obviously, Europe’s war with Russia would never come. Europe is in no position to attack Russia and Russia has no interest in attacking Europe (aside from discouraging terrorism). Instead, European states would eventually do what they always do, throughout their long history: they would fight each other. A German attack on Poland and France is usually at the top of Act I Scene I.

This sequence of events would not be in Russia’s favor. There is, however, a different approach: requiring Europe to sign articles of capitulation, binding its states to policies of nonaggression toward Russia. This is the Japanese model: one or two nukes and then the signing of some paperwork followed by 80 years of peace. It is perfectly normal to regard nuclear weapons as abhorrent; what is not normal is to regard terrorism as acceptable and to regard nuclear weapons as ineffective. Russia could nuke just one European country, chosen for highest Russophobia and maximum distance from Russian territory; that would be Denmark, which is puny but fantastically belligerent against Russia.

The specific target could be Stevring, Østre Alle 6, where Khaki AK-1000 UAV is made. The size of the charge could be chosen to flatten Stevring, to blow out windows in nearby Aalborg (at 260.000, Denmark’s fourth-largest city) and to make radiation detectors go off as far as Gothenburg, Copenhagen and Hamburg. The next step would be a demand for a select group of European representatives to fly to Moscow, there to sign the Articles of Capitulation. If this demand is not acceded to within the allotted time limit, the next target would be chosen at random, struck with something a little bit more powerful, and the demand would be reissued with some additional conditions imposed.

It should take no more than one or two nuclear strikes to produce the required result: European nonaggression toward Russia for the next century.

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Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/b7198463-fd55-4f8a-9339-67fd7dbeef65