How the US Destruction of the INF Treaty Backfired

August 29, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Western media headlines have announced the alleged use by Russia of what is being dubbed the “Iskander-1000,” a ground-launched ballistic missile with a potential range of approximately 1,000 km (Western sources claim previous Iskander missiles had ranges of around 390 km with the current Iskander-1000 having a range of 550 km and a potential future range of 1,000 km). Should the new Iskander variant achieve ranges of up to 1,000 km it would place all of Ukraine’s territory within reach from launch positions across pre-2022 Russian Federation territory.  

The Iskander’s range had previously been capped at 500 km by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. However, that cap was lifted following the unilateral withdrawal of the US from the treaty in 2019 under the first Trump administration. That had followed the likewise unilateral US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 2002 under the Bush administration - all part of a continuous US policy of dismantling arms control treaties and rolling out treaty-violating weapons along the borders of not only Russia, but also Iran in West Asia and China in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Among those US treaty-violating systems were Aegis Ashore installations capable of tracking and intercepting missiles fired by Russia as part of a retaliatory strike - a key violation of the ABM treaty which would theoretically allow the US to carry out a nuclear or conventional first-strike on Russia while preventing or minimizing any Russian retaliation. The Aegis Ashore system is also capable of ground-launching INF treaty-prohibited Tomahawk cruise missiles (2,500 km) offensively. Aegis Ashore was constructed and brought online in Romania and Poland during the Obama and Biden administrations respectively. 

Also following the US withdrawal from the INF treaty was the development and deployment of the mobile Typhon system capable of ground-launching conventional or nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missiles previously prohibited under the INF treaty. The first Typhon systems became operational and plans to deploy it began under the subsequent Biden administration - demonstrating continuity of agenda regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans controlled the US government. 

In addition to the Aegis Ashore and Typhon systems, the US also began work on the Dark Eagle hypersonic ground-launched missile (3,500 km) - another system prohibited under the previous INF treaty. 

There is also the US Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) slated to replace aging and less capable ATAMCS fired by HIMARS and M-270 launchers. PrSM is the closest US-equivalent to the Iskander with PrSM’s current range at 500 km and plans to likewise extend it to 1,000 km in future variants. 

With US-Soviet/Russian treaties abandoned by the US and a growing number of weapon systems being openly developed and deployed by Washington - Russia began rolling out its own comparable systems. 

In addition to the Iskander-1000, Russia has already introduced the Iskander-K (500 km with some variants reaching up to 2,000 km) - a cruise missile launched by the same mobile platforms used to fire Iskander-M ballistic missiles. Ground-launched versions of Russia’s Kalibr cruise missiles (1,500 - 2,500 km) and its hypersonic Zircon missiles (1,000 km) have also been developed and since deployed. 

Most notable among Russia’s rollout of systems to counter US INF treaty-violating weapons is the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile (3,000-5,500 km) capable of delivering up to 6 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) at hypersonic speeds - each of which contain an additional 6 submunitions for a total of 36 projectiles. Its destructive power has already been demonstrated amid the US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. 

US INF Treaty Destruction Backfiring 

The US withdrawal from the INF treaty (and before that, the ABM treaty) was designed to give the US an advantage over not only Russia by further encircling it with treaty-violating anti-missile and offensive missile systems - but also over China which never signed any arms control treaties with the US. However, the emerging result is a lopsided quantitative and qualitative edge for both Russia and China - saying nothing of their combined capabilities. 

Anduril: “Hyperscaling” the Worst of America’s Military Industrial Complex

August 13, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Arms manufacturer “startup” Anduril headed by billionaire Palmer Luckey has quickly morphed into a smaller, more efficient version of legacy American arms manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed, and Boeing - a new model for efficiently transferring billions of taxpayer dollars into private industry based on fabricated threats and manipulative promises - all ultimately falling far short of misguided public expectations. 

While Luckey and Anduril have vowed to “hyperscale” production on par or exceeding Russian and Chinese military industrial production with concepts like “software-defined production” - a process Chinese factories have already incorporated within China’s vastly greater industrial base for years - the only thing actually being “hyperscaled” is war propaganda and its resulting war profiteering. 

Doing “Better” Than Legacy US Corporations, Falling Short of Russia and China

While it is true Anduril is developing weapons that may be a fraction of the cost of other weapons manufactured by legacy US arms producers, they fall short of the quality, quantity, and cost-savings of their Russian counterparts - saying nothing of how far they fall short of China’s military industrial capabilities.

And while it can be said an Anduril cruise missile is cheaper than those produced by Raytheon, they fall far short of the range and destruction Raytheon missiles can achieve.

Many of Anduril’s broken promises have been laid bare on the battlefields of America’s many wars of aggression abroad. 

Anduril drones - having promised to revolutionize the battlefield - have already been sent to Ukraine only to be overwhelmed by Russian quantities and quality - along with quickly evolving Russian electronic warfare capabilities transforming Anduril’s drones into yet another overpriced, underperforming capability. 

The Wall Street Journal in a late 2025 article would admit: 

Anduril’s only real battlefield experience—in Ukraine—has been marred by problems as well, including vulnerability to enemy jamming, according to former employees and others familiar with the systems in Ukraine. Some front-line soldiers of Ukraine’s SBU security service, for instance, found that their Altius loitering drones crashed and failed to hit their targets. The drones were so problematic that they stopped using them in 2024 and haven’t fielded them since, according to people familiar with the matter.

Other Anduril products being developed include the Barracuda family of “affordable mass” cruise missiles. While claimed to already be under “mass production,” only about 1,000 are expected to be delivered annually beginning in 2027. 

The Barracuda 500 variant is the longest ranged missile of the family, claiming to have a range of 930 km, a speed of 930 kilometers per hour, but a warhead of only 45 kilograms. 

This missile - yet to be delivered - already falls far short of various "affordable mass” missiles and loitering munitions being employed by Russia on the battlefield including its Geran family of loitering munitions. 

Its propeller driven variants feature longer ranges and heavier warheads than the Barracuda 500. 

The Ukraine War is a US war on Russia

July 16, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - As the Western media continues shaping narratives depicting a growing divide between the US and Europe regarding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine - a narrative involving an increasingly disinterested and disengaging US with an increasingly desperate and confrontational Europe - it is important to remember precisely how this war was started and why, as well as the material reality shaping its continuation. 

By doing so, it is revealed the only "division" taking place between the US and Europe is a “division of labor,” a phrase literally spoken  by the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in Brussels in February 2025 delegating the continuation of what is a US proxy war on Russia to Europe while the US redirects resources toward Asia. 

Precisely because the war in Ukraine is a US proxy war on Russia, and the fact that Ukraine’s trained military manpower and territory continue to contract under the pressure of Russia’s strategy of attrition, to continue the war will require introducing additional pools of trained military manpower - and to extend Russia further - to do so along a wider front. 

The military build-up of the Baltic states appears to be at a minimum an attempt to fix Russian forces along their border with Russia. The worst case scenario for Moscow would be for the US to repeat with its Baltic state proxies what it has already done in 2008 with its Georgian proxies and what it has done from 2011 onward with its Ukrainian proxies - attack Russia and its allies militarily, precipitating wider war along a wider front.  

Western European nations, including the so-called “coalition of the willing,” led by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, have implemented Secretary Hegseth’s directives from February 2025 enthusiastically - directives including to “double down” on arming Ukraine, “spending more on defense,” and convincing the European public of the “threat facing Europe” (meaning Russia). 

With this in mind, it is clear there is not only no split of any kind between the US and its European proxies, Washington’s European proxies have demonstrated unflinching servile obedience even at the cost of placing themselves on the precipice of war with neighboring nuclear-armed Russia themselves.  

The Larger, Long-Engineered War on Russia

Surrounding Russia with a number of geopolitical and economic crises to “extend Russia” with the hope of eventually precipitating a Soviet Union-style collapse, is the subject of numerous US policy papers spanning the entirety of the post-Cold War period. 

There is even a paper published by the RAND Corporation literally titled, “Extending Russia,” listing a number of measures the US has since implemented verbatim before and since its publication in 2019. 

The paper lays out the economic and geopolitical measures the US has since used to both prepare the grounds for this current proxy war, and to both perpetuate and expand it over time. These measures include targeting Russia’s energy exports including specifically targeting pipeline expansion (Nord Stream, since destroyed by the US), the imposition of sanctions on Russia, the destabilization, destruction and/or the political capture of Russia’s allies both along its borders and beyond (including Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, and Armenia, as well as Syria), and the arming of Ukraine itself following its political capture by Washington in 2014. 

This latter measure, the RAND paper admits, would inevitably invite in wider conflict with Russia - and it did. The paper also admitted the measure would likely end in “disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows,” and that, “it might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.”

The purpose of US policy is not to necessarily “defeat” Russia in Ukraine, or in Georgia, or Armenia, Syria, or in any other particular region - but to create a multitude of crises mounting ever increasing pressure on Russia to create cracks and collapse wherever opportunities allow, and eventually precipitate overall collapse following pressure along a large and growing collection of fronts. 

And this is precisely what the US is doing. 

It doesn’t matter that Ukraine can’t win the current US proxy war against Russia - or that Europe collectively might not be able to either. US objectives are to create a growing conflict that eventually outpaces Russia’s ability to respond and defend itself against. 

Similar strategies have been used against other targets of US “regime change” including Libya, Syria, and Iraq spanning decades before finally and fully succeeding. 

Thus, the measure of Russia’s success is not simply on the battlefield in Ukraine, but its success or failure in defending itself against this much wider campaign of US-driven encroachment - a campaign that has transcended all US presidential administrations since the end of the Cold War without exception and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. 

West Says Ukraine is Now “Winning” and Why it is Lying (Again)

May 25, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - A recent article published in the Kyiv Independent titled, “Is Ukraine starting to win the war again?” tests the maxim that if you need to ask, the answer is probably “no.” 

As the collective Western media has done since 2022, the Kyiv Independent cites “flatlined” Russian territorial gains and expanding drone strikes deep inside Russian territory (the article attributes to Ukraine despite the New York Times admitting such strikes are enabled by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the US military)  - all as evidence of growing Russian weakness and increasing Ukrainian strength. 

A War of Attrition Is Not Measured in Territory or Headlines

In reality - and even as the article itself admits - the war is not one of territorial gains or headline-grabbing drone strikes, but one of attrition. 

At one point the article even admits, “the upper hand will be gained by the side in whose favor the long attritional fight is running.” 

In any war of attrition, the primary factors lending leverage to one side over another is military industrial production and the ability to maintain or expand trained manpower. By implication this also means the ability to maintain the economic, social, and political stability required to support these enabling factors.  

Here the Kyiv Independent concedes Russia wins out big in both categories, admitting “Russia continues to be able to steadily recruit between 30-35,000 new soldiers per month, enabling Moscow to sustain its losses on the battlefield,” and that, “Moscow aims to produce 7.3 million FPVs in 2026.” 

While the Kyiv Independent claims the quality of those 30,000-35,000 Russian troops recruited each month are low, poorly trained, and poorly equipped in the field, it avoids discussing Ukraine’s recruitment struggles. This includes the fact that - unlike Russia’s recruited manpower who voluntarily sign contracts - much of Ukraine’s manpower is pressed into service - sometimes literally being beaten into submission and dragged to the frontline. 

Regarding drone production, other Ukraine-based sources put Ukraine’s drone output somewhere around 4 million per year, or about half of Russia’s production numbers according to the Kyiv Independent. 

It should be pointed out that in addition to Russia outproducing Ukraine (and in reality, Ukraine’s American and European sponsors) in terms of drones - an area of supposed “Ukrainian” strength - Russia continues outproducing Ukraine and its Western sponsors in all other categories of conventional military power as well, from artillery shells and precision-guided missiles, to armored vehicles and anti-aircraft systems. 

Imagining Victory 

The article repeats recent talking points circulating throughout Wall Street-funded Washington-based policy think tanks regarding the cutting off of Russian forces from use of US-based SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communication network as well as high-profile drone strikes deep inside Russia threatening to risk what Western pundits call  “breaking the key social contract at the heart of Putin's rule,” - that is - the illusion of peace at home while Russia wages war abroad. 

However, none of these claims - whether real or imagined - impact the fundamental factors that either win or lose a war of attrition. 

Drone strikes on Russia have targeted energy production, storage, and export facilities, manufacturing centers, and other infrastructure critical for both Russia’s military and economic viability. While these strikes have caused damage, it has not been at a pace greater than Russia’s capacity to repair and/or adapt to the strikes. 

The drone strikes have raised the costs for Russia of the ongoing US proxy war, but have not changed the overall math of attrition that favors Russia owed to its structural advantages. And while this might seem like a fundamental failure for the US - it is actually precisely what US policymakers set out to do as laid out in policy papers stretching back years before the Russian operation began in 2022. 

US Seeks to “Extend” Russia, Not Necessarily Defeat it in Ukraine  

What the drone strikes also achieve is the creation of a psychological effect - not on Russia’s leadership or population - but on the Ukrainian population and the wider Western public - especially the European public. 

Western Media Hails More Ukraine “Wonder Weapons” That Russia Also Has

April 7, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The Western media has shifted much of its attention toward the most recently launched US war of aggression in the Middle East against Iran - but corners of the Western media remain dedicated to shaping public perception regarding many other fronts along the US’ global war on multipolarism, including the ongoing US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. 

Familiar propaganda formulas continue to be utilized to keep these other, older wars raging as the US escalates around the globe elsewhere, including claims of new “wonder weapons” given to or developed by Ukraine. 

Ranging from M777 artillery pieces, to HIMARS, Patriot missile systems, F-16s, and ATACMS - each weapon platform was introduced as a “gamechanger” that would shift Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield despite the same media also insisting Ukraine was already “winning.” 

What many of these articles leave out, however, is even more important than what they present to audiences. 

Ukraine’s Robotic Wonder Weapons 

A recent surge in stories about Ukrainian “ground robots” is now following this familiar pattern. 

The Guardian in its article, “‘The frontline is like Terminator’: fighting robots give Ukraine hope in war with Russia,”  is just one of many articles claiming Ukraine is transforming into a “centre for the development of unmanned weapons,” implying unparalleled expertise possessed by Ukraine regarding aerial drones and now “ground” or “land robots.” 

The Guardian insists Ukraine’s expertise is so immense that it is “highly sought after” even amid Washington’s latest war against Iran - claiming Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among several Persian Gulf states that have signed a 10-year defense agreement with Ukraine “to provide them with low-cost Ukrainian interceptors.”  

What the Guardian fails to mention is the fact that the deal involves technology sharing, factory construction, and localized production in the Middle East that will take years to manifest into actual military capabilities for these Persian Gulf states, implying that Ukraine itself lacks a surplus in drone production as it struggles on the battlefield against Russia.  

The article is - however - primarily about UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles) and how they have filled every combat role along the frontline from infantry and engineering, to logistics and medical evacuations. 

Buried deep in the article, almost at the very end, it makes an admission that, “Russia also makes extensive use of ground systems.”

What the article does not say is that Russia is producing many times more unmanned weapons of all kinds, from drones to ground vehicles, in quantities the collective West’s collective military industrial production cannot match.

US Beta-Testing China Blockade with Attacks on Russian Energy Exports

December 6, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The incremental build-up toward an overt blockade against Russian energy exports continues with recent aerial and naval drone strikes on both Russian energy production facilities deep within Russian territory, as well as Russian energy terminals and ships used to carry Russian energy exports moving to and from them. 

The most recent incidents include attacks on tankers off the coast of Turkey in the Black Sea and naval drone strikes on the Novorossiysk Fuel Oil Terminal. There was also an apparent attack on a tanker involved in moving Russian energy exports, off the coast of Senegal in West Africa, Newsweek would report.

Western media sources have, over the course of several years now, admitted that Ukraine’s aerial and naval drone campaigns are facilitated and directed by the United States through its military command center in Wiesbaden, Germany as well as through the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which has assumed control over Ukraine’s intelligence services since as early as 2014, the New York Times admitted. 

The New York Times in its 2025 article, “The Secret history of America’s Involvement in the Ukraine War,” would admit specifically that: 

“…the Biden administration had authorized helping the Ukrainians develop, manufacture and deploy a nascent fleet of maritime drones to attack Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. (The Americans gave the Ukrainians an early prototype meant to counter a Chinese naval assault on Taiwan.) First, the Navy was allowed to share points of interest for Russian warships just beyond Crimea’s territorial waters. In October, with leeway to act within Crimea itself, the C.I.A. covertly started supporting drone strikes on the port of Sevastopol.”

Besides admittedly directing the attacks itself, the US enables such operations through the use of unique intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities no other Western nation possesses. Thus, attempts to assign responsibility to nations like the UK and France still ultimately implicate the US. 

In regards to aerial drones strikes on Russian energy production facilities deep inside Russian territory, Reuters would publish its article, “US intelligence helps Ukraine target Russian energy infrastructure, FT reports,” noting: 

“The U.S. has been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities for months in a joint effort to weaken the economy and force President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. 

U.S. intelligence has helped Kyiv strike important Russian energy assets, including oil refineries, far beyond the front line, the newspaper said, citing unnamed Ukrainian and U.S. officials familiar with the campaign.”

While the recent attacks on Russian energy production and exports is being presented by the Western media and even some independent commentators as being at cross purposes with US President Donald Trump’s various “peace” proposals, they are actually the manifestation of long-standing US geopolitical objectives aimed at stretching out and undermining Russia and beyond. 

Attacks on Russian Energy Production and Exports Years in the Making

This strategy was laid out years before Russia launched its Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine in 2022, aimed at “extending Russia,” eventually precipitating a Soviet Union-style collapse, and all as part of a much wider strategy of likewise isolating and containing a rising China. 

In a 2019 RAND Corporation paper literally titled, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” in its table of contents included both “geopolitical measures,” like “provide lethal aid to Ukraine” to trigger the now ongoing proxy war with Russia, and “economic emasures” including “hinder petroleum exports” and “reduce natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions.” 

Very clearly these policies have been implemented for years under the Obama, Trump, Biden, and now second Trump administrations and include, first sanctions targeting the construction of Nord Stream 2 and eventually its destruction, as well as sanctions placed on Russian energy production and exports from 2014 onward. The more recent physical attacks on Russian energy production inside Russian territory with the aid of US intelligence and now strikes on tankers used to transport Russian energy exports abroad represents an escalation of these long-stated US objectives. 

New US “Peace” Proposal is “Minsk 3.0” Repackaged (Yet Again)

November 28, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US has once again proposed what it calls a “peace plan” amid its own ongoing proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

The contents of the proposal are irrelevant. The US does not seek peace in general, and certainly not with Russia specifically. Instead, and what previous proposals likewise represented, this is an attempt to freeze the ongoing conflict, rebuild Ukraine’s armed forces - and if possible - move Western troops into Ukraine itself to create a bufferzone possibly forcing advancing Russian forces to stop. 

Beyond mere speculation, this is what US Secretary of Defense (now “Secretary of War”) Pete Hegseth laid out himself in a public directive delivered to Europe in Brussels in February of this year. 

Despite Secretary Hegseth going out of his way to insist, “this must not be Minsk 3.0,” the directive not only explicitly lays out a “Minsk 3.0” framework complete with freezing the ongoing conflict (not ending it), “doubling down” and “re-committing” to Ukraine’s “security needs,” thus rebuilding Ukraine’s armed forces, it actually exceeded it with an additional Syria-style bufferzone imposed by “European and non-European troops.” 

Just as Minsk 1 and 2 prevented Ukraine’s armed forces from being overwhelmed and any actual peace being achieved, this new “Minsk 3.0” proposal seeks to freeze the conflict once again, specifically to prevent any genuine resolution from emerging. 

With “European and non-European troops” placed into Ukraine, Russia’s ability to resume its Special Military Operation (SMO) once it becomes clear the US has once again violated its agreement with Russia, will be complicated by a now deeply entrenched NATO presence inside Ukraine - just as US and Turkish forces complicated the full retaking of Syria by Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies, ultimately leading to the complete collapse of the Russian and Iranian-backed government in late 2024.

Even if the US were to propose a deal explicitly excluding any of these possibilities it must be remembered the original Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 agreements did as well and were simply, blatantly, and very deliberately violated by both the US and its Ukrainian and European proxies. 

It must also be remembered that the US, far beyond just the conflict in Ukraine, has violated every single agreement, treaty, and understanding ever proposed to Russia - and before that - the Soviet Union. There exists a long trail of unilaterally upended arms treaties, memorandums, and agreements left by successive US administrations including by President Donald Trump himself including the now scrapped Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies. 

The current Trump administration has in just under its first year in office alone, used proposed “peace deals” and “ceasefires” with Iran and Lebanon-based Hezbollah as cover for attempted and successful decapitation strikes by both US proxies (Israel), as well as strikes carried out by the US itself against Iran. 

The Russian Response

It is impossible to say with certainty how the Kremlin interprets these proposals. It is almost impossible to conceive Russia’s leadership could be naive enough to believe anything being proposed by the US or even believing the US could in any conceivable way seek peace in the first place.

However, with Minsk 1 and 2 in hindsight and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself having agreed to both proposals despite later admitting they were “sheer deception” according to Russian state media, TASS, it raises questions as to why these agreements were ever accepted in the first place and whether or not Russia will accept future proposals by the West. 

It could be that Russia was simply not ready in 2014-2015 to launch what would eventually shape into the 2022 SMO and felt the time Minsk 1 and 2 created for both sides could be better utilized by Russia and eventually place it in a stronger position than Ukraine and its US sponsors when the SMO was launched.