Imperialist major Offensive of Late 2026: The Imminent Eastern European War and the Full-Scale Escalation of World War 3
Imperialism is the root of war. The Ukraine war is no exception. Only a few months after CIA Director Bill Burns visited Russia in November 2021, the Ukraine war broke out. Russia firmly rejected the imperialist scheme surrounding Ukraine’s NATO accession and the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons and intermediate-range missiles. In August 2026, CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Russia. There may be differences in character between the Biden “administration” and the Trump administration, but fundamentally they are no different in that this was a last attempt to pressure Russia. This time, too, Russia appears to have made its position clear. And now it is the Eastern European war.
NATO is draining Russia’s national strength through a proxy war fronted by Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Britain’s provision of large numbers of drones to Ukraine crosses Russia’s red line. So does the legalization of nuclear weapons deployment in Lithuania following Finland. Drones, like missiles, are among the delivery vehicles that can carry tactical nuclear weapons. Russia faces attacks by tens or hundreds of thousands of drones that could carry tactical nuclear weapons. This is a fatal threat to the nation’s very existence and is absolutely unacceptable.
World War 3, which began with the full-scale escalation of the Ukraine war in February 2022, extended into October 2023 with the West Asian war centered on Palestine. The attempt to start a war in the ‘Republic of Korea (ROK, South Korea)’ in October–December 2024 failed because of the DPRK (Democratic Peopele’s Republic of Korea)’s war deterrent and “strategic patience” and the heroic December Uprising of the ‘ROK’ people. The imperialist forces then changed direction in February 2026 to an Iran-centered West Asian war, deepening the world war anew. As wars expand and theaters converge, the Eastern European war and the East Asian war are being accelerated. The West Asian war and the Ukraine war are converging, and NATO is intervening in the West Asian war. When the Eastern European war breaks out, the East Asian war is almost automatically bound to break out as well. An imminent Eastern European war is an imminent East Asian war.
The second half of 2024 is recorded as the imperialist war offensive that followed the NATO Washington Summit. In a chain of events, there came “Freedom Edge” in late June; “RIMPAC” in July–August; “Ulchi Freedom Shield” and the Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk in August; the concentrated attacks on Hezbollah in September; the ‘ROK’ drone attack on the DPRK in October; the lifting of restrictions on long-range missile use against Russia in November; and the ‘ROK’ military coup and the collapse of Syria’s Assad regime in December. In the second half of 2026, the Iran-centered West Asian war is under way and expanding, while military tension is rising sharply in Eastern Europe and East Asia. Whether it is the Eastern European war or the East Asian war, once either breaks out, that is the full-scale escalation of World War 3. The full-scale escalation of World War 3 is imminent.
Russia’s Expansion and Rivalry among the Imperialist Powers
Russia grew around the Grand Duchy of Moscow, expanded its power into the Volga basin and Siberia, and developed into a Eurasian great power. In the 18th century, through Peter I’s reforms and the Great Northern War, it advanced to the Baltic Sea. In 1703 it founded Saint Petersburg. With the Treaty of Nystad in 1721 it secured Baltic coastal territory from Sweden and rose as a major European power. Under Catherine II it also expanded southward. Through the Russo-Ottoman wars it extended its influence over the northern Black Sea and the Balkans. In 1783 it annexed the Crimean Khanate and took control of the Crimean Peninsula. By taking part in the partitions of Poland, it also expanded its territory and influence in Eastern Europe.
The advance to the Black Sea became linked to the question of the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, which lead to the Mediterranean, and it became a key factor in the clash between Russia’s southward policy and the interests of the European powers. In the 19th century, the southward policy merged with the “Eastern Question.” Russia sought to expand its influence over the Orthodox world and the Slavic peoples while securing control of the straits. Britain sought to protect its sea lanes toward the Mediterranean and India and its colonial interests, and France likewise sought to expand its influence in the Mediterranean and on the European continent.
This rivalry exploded in the Crimean War of 1853. The clash between Russia and the Ottoman Empire widened with the entry of Britain and France and turned into a full-scale war against the allied forces. The main theater was concentrated on the Crimean Peninsula and the fortress of Sevastopol. Russia was defeated in 1856 and concluded the Treaty of Paris. This treaty restricted military activity and fleet deployment in the Black Sea, and Russia’s influence there receded sharply. Then, in 1871, the military restrictions were withdrawn through the Treaty of London, and Russia regained room for military activity in the Black Sea.
After the Crimean War, Russia, its southward advance blocked, turned the direction of its expansion toward Central Asia and the Far East. As it advanced in Central Asia to areas adjoining British India, the “Great Game” unfolded. At the end of the 19th century, Russia’s advance into the Far East expanded further through the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the move into Manchuria. Russia built a rail network linking Europe and the Pacific, in 1898 leased Port Arthur and Dalian on the Liaodong Peninsula from Qing China, and secured military and economic footholds in Manchuria.
Meanwhile, as Japan, victorious in the Sino-Japanese War, rapidly extended its power into Korea and Manchuria, Manchuria and Korea became the key arena where Russia and Japan clashed to secure railways, ports, military bases, markets and spheres of influence. In 1902 the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was concluded, and the structure of confrontation in East Asia intensified further. Britain sought to check Russia’s advance into Central Asia and the Far East and to protect its interests in China. Japan colluded with Britain to secure superiority in Korea and Manchuria. Nominally the alliance professed the independence and territorial integrity of Qing China and Korea, but in substance it tolerated Japan’s rule over Korea.
Assured of British support, Japan did not shrink from a head-on collision with Russia and started the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. On the Korean Peninsula and in Manchuria, the main theater of the war, Japan gained the upper hand through the strength of its naval superiority and its total-war system. Russia, caught between the transport limits of the Trans-Siberian Railway and internal crisis, suffered repeated defeats. The Treaty of Portsmouth was concluded in 1905, ending the war. Russia handed over to Japan its leasehold on the Liaodong Peninsula and its interests in Manchuria, and ceded southern Sakhalin. With Russian checks gone, Japan received international recognition of its rule over the Korea through the Katsura–Taft Agreement and others. The Western powers, instead of participating directly, fought a proxy war through Japan to block Russia, in return handing the Korean Peninsula over to Japanese imperialism.
From Revolution to Civil War
Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War combined with the structural crisis inside Russia. The structural contradictions produced by external imperialist rivalry for hegemony and internal autocratic rule led to the 1905 Revolution. These structural contradictions deepened further with the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914. Russia entered the war as an Entente power together with Britain and France. As the war dragged on, food shortages, inflation and chaos in industry and transport worsened, leading to harsh exploitation of workers and the people.
Lenin defined World War 1 as an inter-imperialist war, and at the Zimmerwald Conference in 1915 he put forward an internationalist line of opposing the world war and turning the imperialist war into civil war. In February 1917, beginning with a demonstration by women workers in Petrograd, strikes and demonstrations by workers spread, soldiers joined them, and the February Revolution broke out. Nicholas II abdicated, and the 300-year Romanov autocracy collapsed. A system of dual power took shape, in which a Provisional Government centered on landlords and capitalists coexisted with the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The Provisional Government continued the war on the pretext of its alliance with the Western powers and failed entirely to resolve the problems of food, land and the people’s livelihood. As the state power seeking to continue the imperialist war collided head-on with the people’s longing to end the war and resolve economic and livelihood problems, the revolution radicalized further.
Under the slogan “All Power to the Soviets!”, the Bolsheviks advanced the halt of the war, the strengthening of Soviet power and the resolution of the land question. In October 1917 the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd and seized power, and the world’s first socialist government was established. The Soviet socialist government issued the “Decree on Peace,” then agreed a ceasefire with Germany in December 1917 and concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, withdrawing completely from World War 1.
Although the revolution had triumphed, domestic and foreign reaction soon colluded and civil war broke out. In 1918–1921, the White Army and counter-revolutionary forces rose in revolt to crush the revolutionary government. An imperialist coalition of fourteen nations—including European powers led by Britain and France, alongside the USA and Japan—intervened. To prevent the spread of the revolution and to maintain capitalist interests on the eastern front, the European powers, styling themselves allied forces, carried out invasions and a full blockade in the north at Arkhangelsk, in the south on the Black Sea, and in the Balkans. They supplied vast amounts of weapons and funds to the Whites and prolonged the civil war. It was a comprehensive counter-revolutionary operation to crush the newborn Soviet government at its outset and to rebuild the capitalist order of hegemony on the Eurasian continent.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks put internationalist solidarity to the fore in order to break through the imperialist encirclement. They strongly opposed imperialism and colonial rule and stressed the national liberation struggles of oppressed peoples and the solidarity of the international working class. At the Second Comintern Congress in 1920, a strategy of organically combining the national liberation movements of colonies and dependent countries with the international revolutionary movement was addressed as a main agenda item. This line led to the formation of a substantive anti-imperialist front. At the Congress of the Toilers of the Far East held in Moscow in January 1922, socialist forces from Korea, China, Japan and elsewhere took part. At this congress a common front for overthrowing imperialism was built. The Soviet government’s support for the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal liberation movements of colonies and dependent countries proved that internationalist solidarity was a real means of striking a blow and breaking through the imperialist powers’ worldwide encirclement. After the Bolshevik Red Army’s final victory, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formally launched in December 1922.
The Anti-Fascist War and the Establishment of the Postwar Cold War Order
After Lenin’s death, socialist state-building was pursued with Stalin at the center. From 1928, five-year plans rapidly expanded heavy industry and the munitions industry. This industrialization later became the material basis for responding to the German invasion in World War 2. During the war, wartime production capacity was maintained by relocating industrial facilities to areas such as east of the Ural Mountains.
As Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and Germany’s military expansion went into full swing, the international situation deteriorated sharply. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and established “Manchukuo,” and in 1937 it launched the Sino-Japanese War in full. In Europe, Germany pursued rearmament and moved to annex Austria and dismember Czechoslovakia. In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and World War 2 began. In June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The Battle of Stalingrad in 1942–1943 became the turning point that halted the German army’s strategic advance. The Soviets then advanced westward and took Berlin in 1945.
In East Asia, the anti-Japanese forces of Korea and China fought against Japanese imperialism. In Manchuria, the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army was active from the late 1930s. Korean anti-Japanese armed forces led it. Later, as circumstances changed, some Korean-Chinese anti-Japanese armed forces moved to the Soviet Maritime Province and the Far East.
In May 1945 Nazi Germany fell. The leaders of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union took part in the Potsdam Conference in July 17–August 2, and on July 26 the United States, Britain and China issued the Potsdam Declaration demanding Japan’s unconditional surrender. Together with the Soviet declaration of war on Japan on August 8, the Korean-Chinese-Soviet anti-Japanese armed forces launched a large-scale general attack on Japanese imperialism on August 9 and advanced into the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. Japan announced its surrender on August 15 and signed the formal instrument of surrender on September 2.
In the course of Japan’s surrender, a military demarcation line was set on the Korean Peninsula along the 38th parallel. North of the 38th parallel the Soviet army, and south of it the US army, handled the surrender and disarmament of the Japanese forces. This became the starting point that led, together with the entrenchment of the “Cold War,” to a long-term system of division.
After World War 2 ended, Soviet influence extended into Eastern Europe. Socialist governments were established in the Eastern European countries of Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and others, and the Eastern European socialist bloc was formed. The US-centered imperialist forces defined this as an expansion of the Soviet sphere and a spread of communism, and pursued a policy of containment. The postwar international order was reorganized into a bipolar system with the Soviet Union and the United States as its axes. The United States and the Western imperialist countries created NATO in April 1949, building an anti-Soviet, anti-communist military alliance. In response, the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist countries formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955 and countered with a collective defense system.
The confrontation between the two camps hardened beyond Europe into a “Cold War” structure on a global scale. In the 1950s–1970s, armed clashes and crises of full-scale war between the two camps appeared as local proxy wars and nuclear war crises. The Korean War of 1950–1953 was the first large-scale hot war of the “Cold War period,” and in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, direct confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States came to the brink of nuclear war.
The Formation of the Anti-Russia Encirclement and the Manufactured “Revolution”
From 1989 the Eastern European socialist bloc collapsed in a chain, and with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 the “Cold War” ended. Ukraine, too, declared independence in August 1991 and confirmed it by national referendum in December. NATO, which should have been dissolved, was instead expanded and strengthened. The “Partnership for Peace (PfP)” launched in 1994 and NATO’s 1999 Strategic Concept were machinations to encircle Russia and to perpetuate the military dominance of the Western imperialist forces on the Eurasian continent.
In 1999 Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined NATO. In 2004 seven more countries joined, including the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. From 2004 through the 2010s, NATO air policing assets were deployed and rotated into the Baltic region in stages. Missile defense sites aimed directly at Russia’s mainland were built in Romania and Poland, turning all of Eastern Europe into a forward base for the West.
NATO concluded the Founding Act setting out basic relations with Russia in 1997. In the same year it concluded the “Charter on a Distinctive Partnership” with Ukraine. The imperialist forces pursued a dual strategy: they redefined Russia as a partner for cooperation while meticulously expanding NATO’s eastern domain. Ukraine, a geopolitical pivot linking the Eurasian continent, the Black Sea and Eastern Europe, was the key target and the outpost of NATO’s eastward expansion policy.
At the NATO Prague Summit in November 2002, the “NATO–Ukraine Action Plan” was adopted. It stipulated linking the Ukrainian military’s command and control system to NATO standards, control of the military by civilian state organs, and the conclusion of agreements on the security of state secrets, and thereby accelerated the institutional subordination of Ukraine’s military apparatus. In the civilian sphere, it deepened pro-Westernization by providing funds and training to civil society, the media, political organizations and others.
The ouster of the Miloševi큓 regime in Yugoslavia in 2000 and Georgia’s “Rose Revolution” in 2003 are representative cases of regime-change operations led by the imperialist forces. Intervention in Ukraine was carried out with still greater persistence on the basis of this regime-change formula, with concrete budgets and the mobilization of quasi-governmental and public institutions. In 2004 the US government allocated $34.11 million of its $143.47 million Ukraine aid budget to “democracy programs,” supporting elections, the media, civil society and political parties. The NED (National Endowment for Democracy) continuously poured funds into pro-Western political and civic networks and built the organizational and financial foundation for regime change. This network operated as the core base of the pro-Western forces in the 2004 presidential election. Immediately after the runoff election, it stoked controversy over electoral fraud and manufactured the “Orange Revolution.”
The Yushchenko government, which subsequently took power, made EU (European Union) and NATO integration a national task and rapidly shifted Ukraine’s external strategy to a Western-centered one. In March 2004, the Ukrainian parliament abruptly passed an agreement guaranteeing NATO forces access to Ukrainian territory, airspace and ports and freedom of movement within it. Ukraine’s entire territory was opened as a legal and institutional corridor through which Western military forces could pass and assemble at any time. At the Yavorov training ground in Lvov, near the Polish border, US and NATO instructor teams were stationed and directly took charge of Ukraine’s elite units. In this process, intelligence agencies such as the US CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) deeply infiltrated Ukraine’s military and intelligence agencies under the pretext of building a special operations intelligence network.
To stir up anti-Russian sentiment in Eastern Europe, the imperialist forces actively co-opted and tamed ultra-right chauvinist forces. With the imperialist forces’ unofficial support, neo-Nazi armed organizations including the Azov Battalion legally penetrated the regular forces of state security organs such as Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Internal Affairs, and laid a foothold for expanding their power.
The Red Line of NATO’s Eastward Expansion, the Fuse of the Proxy War
At the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, Russian President Putin defined the US-centered unipolar system and NATO’s eastward expansion as “a serious provocation that wholly violates the pledge against eastward expansion that the West made at the time of the Warsaw Pact’s dissolution.” He declared a “red line” publicly, saying that the forward deployment of military infrastructure near Russia’s borders would never be tolerated.
Despite the warning, at the NATO Bucharest Summit in Romania on April 2–4, 2008, the question of Ukraine’s and Georgia’s NATO membership was taken up as an agenda item. Under the strong leadership of US President Bush, it was officially confirmed that the two countries would become NATO members in the future. On April 4, in an informal closed-door meeting of the NATO–Russia Council, Putin issued a strong warning to Bush: “You must understand that Ukraine is not even a proper state. A considerable part of Ukraine’s territory was handed over from Eastern Europe and from Russia, and if NATO admits Ukraine, Ukraine will not survive as a state and will break apart.”
In August, the Georgian Saakashvili regime, overconfident in the political and military backing of the United States and the West, launched a preemptive armed offensive against the pro-Russian conflict region of South Ossetia. Russia began a large-scale counter-operation under the pretext of protecting its peacekeeping forces and its citizens. In a matter of days it neutralized Georgia’s military power and advanced to the very edge of the capital, Tbilisi. The Saakashvili regime appealed for immediate NATO military intervention, but once the fighting broke out, the Western imperialist forces abandoned Georgia and provided no military support whatsoever. Georgia permanently lost control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, lost 20% of its total territory, and effectively surrendered.
After the Western imperialists’ strategic failure in Georgia, the anti-Russia encirclement strategy was strengthened with Ukraine at its center. In 2014 the “Euromaidan” coup was engineered in Ukraine. In November 2013, when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych suspended the conclusion of a comprehensive trade agreement with the EU and sought realistic economic cooperation with Russia, the US and Western imperialist forces immediately set about a planned regime-change operation. Under the protection of Western funding networks, including the NED, and of intelligence agencies, demonstrations were engineered on Maidan Square in Kyiv. These soon turned completely into a violent, bloody coup spearheaded by neo-Nazis and Banderites. The US government publicly supported the Maidan events and kept in continuous contact with Ukrainian political forces. In February 2014 the Yanukovych government was ousted.
Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov immediately pressed ahead with exclusionary repression of Ukraine’s pro-Russian population, including the abolition of Russian’s status as an official language. In reaction, on March 16–18 the residents of the Crimean Peninsula decided, by an overwhelming turnout, on unification with their motherland, Russia. Through a swift military operation, Russia rapidly secured the Black Sea Fleet’s security bases and the Crimean Peninsula.
After the breakaway of Crimea, a spontaneous uprising by the people against ultra-right chauvinist violence, together with a separatist movement, got under way in earnest in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region as well. In April the people of Donbass proclaimed the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic and rose in self-defensive resistance. On April 14, Turchynov branded the people of Donbass “terrorists,” formally approved an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) and launched a military attack. The Poroshenko neo-Nazi regime, which took power in May, then greatly expanded its military repression with the Western powers’ full-scale funding and weapons support. The neo-Nazi militias formally incorporated into the regular army, such as the Azov Battalion and Aidar, carried out indiscriminate shelling and massacres against civilian residential areas in Donbass. The imperialist forces went beyond standing by and coordinating this civil war: they stationed military advisers, brought in large quantities of lethal NATO-standard weapons, and completely transformed all of Ukraine into a powder keg of proxy war.
The Tactical Nuclear Missile Deployment Plan That Became the Trigger of the War
The armed resistance of the Donbass militias and the continued defeats of Ukraine’s regular army left the front in stalemate. The Western imperialist forces and the Poroshenko neo-Nazi regime feigned peace negotiations in order to buy time to reorganize their forces. Under the leadership of German Chancellor Merkel and French President Hollande, the first Minsk Agreement was concluded on September 5, 2014. The agreement was effectively broken within weeks, as the Poroshenko regime did not stop its indiscriminate shelling of civilian residential areas in Donbass and launched a large-scale renewed offensive at key points such as Debaltsevo in early 2015.
On February 12, 2015, the second Minsk Agreement was reached, centered on an immediate ceasefire, autonomy for Donbass and constitutional reform. In an interview after the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February 2022, Poroshenko confessed about that agreement, “We gained eight years to build an army and rebuild the economy.” In an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit in December 2022, Merkel admitted, “The 2014 Minsk Agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time, and Ukraine used that time to become stronger.” Hollande concurred and confirmed that the agreement had been solely a way of buying time for Ukraine’s military rearmament.
Immediately after the 2014 “Euromaidan” coup, the United States carried out astronomically large military aid over many years through programs such as the “Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI).” It continuously supplied offensive weapon systems such as “Javelin” anti-tank missiles, counter-battery radars and unmanned aircraft. Instructor teams from NATO member states, including the United States, Britain and Canada, were stationed on Ukrainian soil at places such as the Yavorov training center and directly trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian regular troops to NATO standards. In February 2019, the Poroshenko regime formally wrote NATO and EU (European Union) membership into the constitution as the nation’s highest strategic goal. The Sea of Azov area degenerated into a NATO naval and air base where US Navy destroyers, NATO patrol aircraft and strategic bombers came and went constantly.
After the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in August 2019, a plan to deploy medium and short range offensive weapon systems on Ukraine’s eastern border took shape. This meant that “Tomahawk” cruise missiles and the like, capable of carrying not only conventional high-explosive warheads but also tactical nuclear warheads, could be stationed right at Russia’s border. If these weapon systems were deployed operationally on Ukrainian soil, the time for a nuclear missile to reach Moscow would be cut to only 4–5 minutes.
On December 17, 2021, the Russian Foreign Ministry made public a legally binding “draft security guarantee treaty” addressed to the USA and NATO. The draft stipulated the blocking of NATO’s further eastward expansion by permanently excluding Ukraine’s and Georgia’s NATO membership and banning the establishment of military bases on their territory. In particular, it demanded a total ban on deploying offensive medium and short range missiles within the former Soviet territory. It further urged withdrawing NATO’s military-related infrastructure to its pre-1997 level, before the first eastward expansion, and building a mechanism to prevent accidental clashes by limiting large-scale military exercises in border areas. It was the last negotiating proposal Russia put forward.
In the negotiations that continued into early 2022, the US and Western imperialist forces completely ignored Russia’s demands, saying that “NATO’s open-door policy is non-negotiable.” From mid-February 2022, decisive signs were detected that the Ukrainian fascist regime was about to launch a large-scale full invasion of Donbass. On February 21, Russia recognized the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic and concluded treaties of friendship and cooperation with both. On February 24, Russian President Putin declared the start of a special military operation and presented its goals as protecting the population, denazification and demilitarization. In his address he said, “Leading NATO countries are supporting Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis to achieve their own aims,” and added, “We will bring before a court those who committed many crimes and who bear responsibility for the bloodshed of civilians, including Russians.”
The Protracted Ukraine War and the Solid Anti-Imperialist Front
Immediately after the start of the special military operation, the US and Western imperialist forces poured tens of billions of dollars’ worth of advanced weapon systems and funds into Ukraine. Within months of the outbreak of the war, the United States provided billions of dollars’ worth of “Javelin” anti-tank missiles, “Stinger” air-defense missiles, howitzers and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), taking the lead in the actual operational control and arming of the Ukrainian army.
In March 2022, NATO held an emergency summit, greatly reinforced its standing troops on the eastern front, and created and deployed additional multinational battlegroups in four Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. It completed the blockade network of the “eastern front,” from the Baltic Sea through Poland and Central Europe to the Black Sea coast. On February 26, 2022, the United States and the EU froze $300 billion of the Russian Central Bank’s overseas assets and cut it off from the SWIFT payment network. In addition, they enforced an energy export ban and the withdrawal of multinational corporations and imposed unprecedented economic and financial sanctions. The imperialist forces sought to induce Russia’s economic and social bankruptcy through a protracted war of attrition while continuously expanding weapons supplies to Ukraine and entrenching the proxy war. On November 17, 2024, the Biden “administration” lifted the restrictions on long-range missile use against Russia and decisively raised the possibility of escalation.
In the face of the economic blockade and military threats of the USA and the West, Russia converted its national industry to a complete total-war system and accelerated strategic solidarity with non-Western forces such as China and India. Based on its resources, energy and productive capacity, it expanded alternative markets and supply chains, and extended logistics networks running across Eurasia and non-dollar financial and settlement systems. In response to the prolonged war, it pursued troop recruitment and expanded munitions production in parallel. It reorganized the national defense industrial system into a 24-hour continuous operation structure and raised the defense budget to over 7% of GDP, driving the growth of the defense industry. Russia’s munitions factories succeeded in substituting domestic parts and building alternative supply chains in response to the Western cutoff of parts supply. In 2023–2025, production of key combat equipment such as tanks, missiles, artillery and unmanned aircraft rose dramatically. In particular, Russia drastically strengthened its long-range strike capability to neutralize the air defenses the West had provided to Ukraine and to precisely strike deep military facilities.
In June 2023 Russia deployed tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory, and in May–June 2024 it swiftly carried out joint tactical nuclear weapons exercises, demonstrating its practical nuclear deterrent toward NATO’s eastern front. On November 19, 2024, it approved and put into effect the final revision of the Basic Principles of State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence. The revised nuclear doctrine considers even a conventional attack, if it is aggression by a non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear power, to be a joint aggression, and greatly relaxes the conditions so that nuclear weapons can be used if a serious threat arises to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state and its allies. It is both a warning that a military clash with NATO could escalate into a full-scale nuclear war and a deterrent that blocks direct Western intervention.
With the prolongation of the Ukraine war, the strategic and tactical cooperation of the anti-imperialist forces has leapt forward as never before. China and Russia deepened their comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era on the occasion of their summit on May 16, 2024. They expanded joint military exercises and joint naval and air patrols and strengthened energy cooperation in oil and natural gas, as well as trade and investment. They are expanding settlement in national currencies and financial cooperation, jointly responding to the West’s unilateral sanctions and economic pressure. The DPRK and Russia concluded the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty on June 19, 2024, agreeing that if either side is subjected to armed invasion and put in a state of war, the other shall provide military and other assistance without delay. In October 2024, DPRK troops were directly deployed in the Kursk liberation operation, and the alliance relationship made a qualitative leap.
The Imminent Eastern European War and the Full-Scale Eruption of World War 3
The full-scale escalation of the Ukraine war in February 2022 marked the onset of World War 3. In October 2023 the Palestine war broke out and immediately spread into the West Asian war. From September to November 2024 and in December, imperialist forces persistently provoked a war in the ‘ROK.’ The Yoon Suk-yeol fascist regime’s provocation of a limited war against the DPRK and its military coup were crushed by the DPRK’s war deterrent and “strategic patience” and by the heroic uprising of the people in the ‘ROK.’
With the war in the ‘ROK’ blocked, the imperialist forces set off the Iran war in February 2026, bringing the West Asia war to full scale, and they are scheming to expand the Ukraine war into Eastern Europe. In East Asia, the trigger of the Ukraine war is being reproduced through the attempt to deploy tactical nuclear missiles. The war is expanding and the theaters are converging.
In September 2025, NATO officially announced the Eastern Sentry operation and additionally deployed fighters, surveillance aircraft and air defense forces to the eastern front. In May 2026, Lithuania’s foreign minister said NATO must show Moscow that it has the capability to infiltrate Kaliningrad and destroy its air defense systems and missile bases. In June, NATO activated its ninth multinational battlegroup in Finland and completed a forward deployment system linking Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. On June 26, Finland finalized amendments to its Nuclear Energy Act and Criminal Code, opening the possibility of operating NATO nuclear forces on its territory. On July 2, Lithuania agreed to pursue a constitutional amendment abolishing the constitutional ban on deploying nuclear weapons and foreign military bases. At the NATO Ankara Summit on July 7–8, NATO decided to provide Ukraine with 70 billion euros in military equipment, assistance and training and to maintain at least the same level in 2027. It defined NATO’s deterrence and defense posture as a combination of nuclear, conventional and missile defense capabilities, and pursued strengthening of war-fighting capabilities such as precision long-range strike, integrated air defense and unmanned systems.
On July 24, 2026, the Ukrainian military bombed an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea, and the Ukraine war began to converge with the West Asian war. Today in Europe, clashes around Kaliningrad, in Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic states, are escalating into full-scale war.
On September 11, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski argued that NATO should conduct military exercises near Kaliningrad more aggressively so that Russia would have no choice but to pull troops out of Ukraine. On September 13, Russian forces bombed railway facilities and a train at Yahodyn station near the Polish border. High-level Western figures, including a former British prime minister, a former Swedish prime minister and a former US CIA director, who were traveling after the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv, narrowly escaped death. It was an ultra-hardline warning that imprinted Russia’s will to retaliate without exception against Western military and personnel involvement, even in NATO border zones. On September 14, in international waters near Gedser in southern Denmark, a Russian frigate fired a signal flare at a Danish military helicopter that was monitoring it at close range. Over the Baltic Sea, a standoff with French “Rafale” fighters continues on the brink of direct clash. On September 15, an Italian fighter shot down a Russian-made drone that had entered Lithuanian airspace from Belarus.
From September 2 to 20, the “Strong Griffin 2026” exercise was carried out in Lithuania, mobilizing about 2,500 troops and some 500 pieces of military equipment from the United States, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Ukraine and Moldova. On September 27, Poland and Lithuania announced that they are jointly preparing a cross-border civilian evacuation plan to move some residents of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into Poland through the Suwałki corridor in the event of a major crisis. On September 30, Russia revealed in a diplomatic note sent to NATO that the alliance is preparing an air and naval blockade of Kaliningrad. Russian President Putin pointed to NATO’s preparations for military confrontation with Russia and warned that he would not rule out the use of nuclear weapons if Kaliningrad were directly attacked.
The Eastern European war means the full-scale escalation of World War 3. The Eastern European war leads directly to the East Asian war. In the second half of 2026, the war situation is extremely acute.
