13:42 01-12-2025

Kolesnik Warns NATO Escalation Risks Nuclear Conflict

By Estonian Foreign Ministry - https://www.flickr.com/photos/16941867@N06/53362637132/, CC BY 2.0, Link

Andrey Kolesnik warns that NATO’s escalating rhetoric, including calls for preemptive strikes, risks a nuclear conflict and forces Russia to strengthen strategic forces.

Member of the State Duma Defense Committee Andrey Kolesnik believes that NATO member states are steadily fueling an escalation spiral that, in his view, leads directly toward a third world war.

He was commenting on a recent statement by the chairman of the alliance’s military committee, Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, who called for considering preemptive strikes against Russia. Kolesnik argued that such rhetoric worsens relations with Moscow and stressed that, as he put it, no one has attacked NATO; instead, the bloc is building up a self-serving narrative and actively promoting it at home.

Kolesnik also expressed the view that a preemptive strike would ultimately be delivered by the side that feels a genuine and imminent threat. At the same time, he warned that in the event of a global conflict the debate over who struck first would simply disappear, because after an exchange of blows, the world itself would cease to exist.

According to the lawmaker, statements of this kind coming from the West force Russia to strengthen its defense capabilities, with a particular focus on strategic forces. Kolesnik is convinced that any potential war between Russia and NATO would inevitably involve nuclear components.