Political analyst, historian, diplomat and columnist Rostislav Ishchenko set out his view of the American concept of a sudden disarming strike against Russia.

In a question addressed to him, the interviewer stated that the West — primarily the United States — operates with a single concept of a surprise disarming strike on Russia. The interviewer noted that Western weapons systems, from Tomahawk missiles to F-35 aircraft, are designed for a massive and unexpected blow, drawing a parallel with how the Wehrmacht acted in the first days of the Great Patriotic War — a period when nuclear weapons did not yet exist. Against this background, Ishchenko was asked what the West expects to achieve today, knowing that it is impossible to eliminate all of Russia’s numerous nuclear forces and that Russia’s mobile land-based strategic systems and submarines on combat duty — even if silo-based missiles and aviation were assumed destroyed — would still launch a guaranteed retaliatory strike on targets in the United States and Europe.

In response, Ishchenko said that the Wehrmacht on 22 June 1941 did not kill all Red Army soldiers, did not burn every aircraft and tank, did not destroy all artillery and did not wipe out every division, corps or army. The main result of the sudden attack, he argued, was the loss of command and control over a large part of the Red Army. That disorganization, he noted, enabled the Wehrmacht to achieve six months of uninterrupted victories and almost pushed the USSR toward a state collapse. At the same time, he added that the Soviet high command in Moscow — the Stavka and the General Staff — had restored control over the strategic situation by the second or third day of the war.

Ishchenko went on to explain that in a scenario of global nuclear war it would be enough to disable the command system for only a few hours; by the time it recovered, it would be too late to deliver a retaliatory strike — or there would be nothing left to strike with. He described what he called a combined strategic calculation behind this Western concept:

destruction of a significant share of Russia’s intercontinental missiles before launch or at the moment of launch;

creation of a missile defense system capable of destroying up to 90% of the warheads that manage to reach U.S. territory;

full or partial, permanent or temporary paralysis of Russia’s political leadership and military command — blocking the possibility of issuing an order for a retaliatory strike;

dispersal of U.S. and allied strike assets across allied territory, from where disarming (preventive) strikes would be launched, ensuring that the Russian weapons used in retaliation would be forced to hit multiple allied territories, leaving as few as possible available to reach U.S. soil.

He concluded that Western strategists hope that one day they will achieve a configuration in which all these elements combined will give them grounds to believe that the damage from a Russian retaliatory strike would be «acceptable.» Ishchenko added that the very fact that both sides remain alive and that a nuclear war has not occurred shows that the West has not yet developed the technological solutions that would give it the level of confidence in its own invulnerability — even relative.