Did Ukraine Just Blow Up Strategic Arms Control Between the Great Powers?

Time to consider NTM, SALT, and START--that is, the unspoken implications of Ukraine's attacks Russian airfields--which should give everyone pause here

On 2 March 2022, I penned a few lines about the then-recent consequences of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. Even back then, it was worthwhile revisiting some ‘old’ news:

In October 2019, French president and paid globalist shill Emmanuel Macron made a few waves by declaring NATO ‘brain-dead’, which is about as much as anyone should remember about the present situation. As quoted by The Economist (archived) on 7 Nov. 2019 (emphases and [snark] mine):

The president argues that it is high time for Europe to “wake up”. He was asked whether he believed in the effectiveness of Article Five, the idea that if one NATO member is attacked all would come to its aid, which many analysts think underpins the alliance's deterrent effect. “I don’t know,” he replies, “but what will Article Five mean tomorrow?”

NATO, Mr Macron says, “only works if the guarantor of last resort functions as such. I’d argue that we should reassess the reality of what NATO is in the light of the commitment of the United States.” And America, in his view, shows signs of “turning its back on us,” as it demonstrated starkly with its unexpected troop withdrawal from north-eastern Syria last month, forsaking its Kurdish allies [so, given Mr. Biden’s (sic) track record, where are we™ now?].

In President Donald Trump, Europe is now dealing for the first time with an American president who “doesn’t share our idea of the European project”, Mr Macron says. This is happening when Europe is confronted by the rise of China and the authoritarian turn of regimes in Russia and Turkey. Moreover, Europe is being weakened from within by Brexit and political instability.

This toxic mix was “unthinkable five years ago,” Mr Macron argues. “If we don’t wake up [...] there’s a considerable risk that in the long run we will disappear geopolitically, or at least that we will no longer be in control of our destiny. I believe that very deeply.”

Fast-forward less than six years, I consider both the EU and Mr. Macron in particular in light of these comments. Back in early March 2022, I wrote the following about these musings, which

show both the decay of historical consciousness across the board and the degeneracy of the EUrocratura in particular…

What matters in geopolitics are the following three facts, and you’re herewith warmly invited to disagree with any or all of them:

Military capabilities…Economic power…Credibility

Please refer to my 2022 piece for ‘more’, for we’ve got other, perhaps bigger, fish to fry today.

Notes from the Upside-Down I: NATO's 'War', Geopolitics, and the Folly of EUrocrats

For today, we’ll talk about an angle of the weekend’s Ukrainian attacks on Russian airfields, and I’d invite you to consider the below aspects carefully.

Definitions First: NMT

Before we get going, a few words of definitions (via that spook-enabled/ infested repository of common knowledge, Wikipedia):

National technical means of verification (NTM) are monitoring techniques, such as satellite photography, used to verify adherence to international treaties.

Basically, what used to be very much part of covert operations—think Francis Gary Powers piloting a U-2 spy plane being shot down over the USSR in 1960 (Wikipedia)—morphed into what is today known as strategic and, above all, open reconnaissance. Here’s a timeline of American strategic reconnaissance, conducted under the aegis of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which was officially admitted to exist as recently as 1992.

Why do I bring this up?

Easy, for while the technological parameters of strategic reconnaissance have changed drastically from the first dedicated satellites shot into orbit around 1960, the key is the term national technical means of verification. Today, it includes the use and analyses of images, telemetry data, optical and radar-based sensors, and a variety of space-based gadgets, as well as ground-based seismic and acoustic sensors.

A few more lines from the Wikipedia piece I quoted above to drive home the issue at-hand:

[NMT] continues to appear in subsequent arms control negotiations, which have a general theme called ‘trust but verify’. Verification, in addition to information explicitly supplied from one side to the other, involves numerous technical intelligence disciplines. Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT) techniques, many being especially obscure technical methods, are extremely important parts of verification.

Outside of treaties, the techniques described here are critical in overall counterproliferation work. They can gather information on the states, with known or presumed nuclear weapons, that have not ratified (or are withdrawing from) the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan.

While the techniques here are focused primarily at missile and nuclear weapons limitation, the general principles hold for verification of treaties to counter the proliferation of chemical and biological warfare capabilities: ‘trust but verify’.

Basically, these issues function in int’l relations akin to two drunkards pulling down their pants to ensure that no-one can impress™ anyone by claiming that one or the other has a small wiener. And, as absurd as this comparison may sound, it’s actually one of the few things that worked during the Cold War.

And that brings us to the implications of Ukraine’s attack on four Russian airfields on the weekend.

Ukraine Strikes Russian Airfields

Here follows a brief comparative reading exercise contrasting Western (NYT) and Russian (RT.com) reporting™ on the same event.

From the NY Times (1 June 2025):

Ukraine on Sunday launched one of its broadest assaults of the war against air bases inside Russia, a coordinated operation that targeted sites from eastern Siberia to Russia’s western border and that left several Russian aircraft in flames.

The Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian airfields came as Kyiv suffered a damaging blow of its own on Sunday, with Russia striking a Ukrainian military training base and killing at least 12 soldiers.

From Russia Today (1 June 2025):

Military airfields in five Russian regions, including in Siberia and the Far East, have been targeted in coordinated drone attacks orchestrated by Kiev, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday. Ukrainian media has called it a major operation targeting Russian strategic aviation. According to Moscow, most of the strikes were repelled, with some resulting in material damage but no casualties.

I’ll spare us the rest of esp. the NYT piece, but both the ‘Paper of Record’ and RT are in agreement on the significance in regards to the Istanbul talks, scheduled to continue on Monday:

Sunday’s attacks came on the eve of another round of peace talks in Istanbul, proposed by Moscow. While Kyiv had insisted it see a promised memorandum outlining Russia’s cease-fire terms before sending any officials to the talks, Mr. Zelensky announced Sunday that Kyiv would in fact send a delegation. (NYT)

The attacks came just a day before scheduled talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul. The two nations were scheduled to hold the second round of the recently resumed direct negotiations, which were stalled for three years after Kiev unilaterally walked away from the talks in spring 2022. (RT)

Basically, what we’re observing is part and parcel of the negotiation danse macabre between two fighting parties. Like the Russian air attack on Ukraine over the weekend, this is all very much connected to the on-off talks mediated by Türkiye.

At this point, we may consider the following obvious aspects:

• If Russia’s defences failed, they did so merely in a way that does not affect the balance of power in both the ongoing conflict with Ukraine and the proverbial bigger picture of NATO’s confrontation with Moscow.

• Losses incurred by Russia appear not small, but in the grander scheme of things they are irrelevant; Russia has ample strategic bombers at its disposal (which are quite obsolete anyways with the advent of hypersonic missile technology), and none of the delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons that serve as a deterrent has been attacked.

• Russia considers Ukraine’s attacks as a bit of a nuisance—the bombing of the railroad bridges in the Bryansk region incurred civilian casualties, something that appears to annoy Moscow much more—in particular as these attacks failed to shift anything significant in Russia.

• Basically, the hype in Western legacy media is virtually all that there is to these attacks; the most disgusting aspect here, though, is that not even this quite obvious asymmetric way of waging war is celebrated by Western politicos™, experts™, and journos™. It’s as if the latter are openly admitting to the farcical nature of int’l law, and we’ll return to this point in due time.

Implications of Ukraine’s Weekend Attacks

While the United States—and, by extension, ‘brain-dead NATO’ (Macron)—are inching ever-closer to direct conflict with Russia (which is actually already a reality), there is little factual evidence that sanctions or continued support for Ukraine will affect the outcome. From an op-ed by Sergey Poletaev published by RT on 1 June 2025, which I find quite helpful to understand the major shift in the Ukrainian narratives since February 2022:

Media blitz vs. military reality

The challenge for Russian leadership is that, while Russia fights for concrete territorial and strategic goals, it does so with little public fanfare. Battlefield updates have faded into background noise. But in a country as vast and largely peaceful as Russia, Ukraine is betting that symbolic strikes —even rare ones—can pierce the political surface. The hope is that such provocations either force Moscow into risky overreach or draw the US deeper into the war.

Over time, Ukraine’s objectives have shifted—from military breakthroughs to media impact. Like last year’s failed push into Kursk, these efforts aren’t meant to win the war outright, but to disrupt Russia’s slow, methodical advance. That advance, however, is accelerating. According to data from Lostarmour, Russian forces gained nearly 580 square kilometers in May alone—the second-highest monthly figure since 2022.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian defenses are crumbling. Drone strikes on Moscow have disrupted civilian air traffic but have done little to halt Russia’s daily barrage—attacks Ukraine’s depleted air defenses increasingly struggle to repel. In October 2024, Russia launched around 2,000 ‘Geran’-type drones in one month. Today, it’s sending hundreds per day…

Bold visuals aside, these attacks are unlikely to change the war’s trajectory —or Kiev’s negotiating hand.

And here we are: while the Ukrainian bravado is quite understandable—it’s a last-ditch effort to drag the one country that matters™ (the USA) into direct conflict with Russia—it also doubles as a negotiation ploy.

Bigger Pictures: SALT and START

Personally, I doubt this will work; yet the implications with respect to strategic arms control arrangements between the US and Russia—and let’s be honest here: that the one thing that matters—are enormous.

Although we’ve already established that NMT was enshrined in these arrangements during the Nixon presidency, here’s a bit more background as to why Russian heavy (strategic) bombers were parked on the airfields, courtesy of the START II arrangement (1993) that, although never entered into force, appears to have been the working basis for both Russian and American military forces:

Article IV

8. Heavy bomber reoriented to a conventional role shall be subject to the following requirements…

(d) heavy bombers reoriented to a conventional role shall have differences from other heavy bombers of that type or variant of a type that are observable by national technical means of verification [satellite imagery] and visible during inspection.

This is the money clause here, I submit, and the absence of any mentioning of this aspect of US-Russian relations in the breathless legacy media reporting™—as well as from official statements—should all give us pause.

Bottom Lines

I consider the Ukrainian attack a last-ditch effort of desperation, which may get us all killed due to these implications.

While defensible from a realistic point of view, I can very well imagine that this operation was conceived by Kyiv alone (although I remain wary of Western non-participation) given its drastic implications.

The absence of any mentioning of these strategic implications is, in my view, very telling, which might double as a none-too-subtle hint to Ukraine that it’s over.

May Moscow have permitted some of these attacks to shore up domestic and int’l support? Of course that may be the case, but in any event, this doesn’t mean this course of action isn’t highly dangerous.

Time will tell.