The massive Russian bombardment of Kyiv in recent days – conducted with the use of Oreshnik, Kinzhal and Iskander missiles – does not shift the strategic balance on the battlefield one iota. This is not a military breakthrough, but anoperation of psychological coercion on a continental scale. It is the most classic and ruthless application of the reflexive control advocated by the Gerasimov doctrine: forcing the adversary to make self-destructive decisions by convincing him that they are the only way out. Oreshnik’s goal is not to break the Ukrainian front line: it is to undermine the political resilience of European democracies by feeding the fears of Western public opinion with surgical precision.

Russia has long understood that the centre of gravity of the war no longer lies in the Donbass, but in European parliaments, Western election cycles, and the growing weariness of Western societies. Every hypersonic missile launched towards Ukraine contains a message directed not so much at Kyiv as at Berlin, Rome, Paris and Washington: ‘The cost of supporting Ukraine will become unsustainable. Surrender now, before it is too late’. It is here that the Kremlin’s real strategic bluff is played out. A bluff that finds tactical backing in those Western political actors – real fifth columns – ready to barter the security of the continent in exchange for an ephemeral domestic electoral dividend.

Behind the bombastic narrative of the invincible weapon, Moscow in fact hides an increasingly evident structural weakness

The muscular display serves to cover up a war attrition that is now unsustainable and the debacle of the Kremlin’s military machine that continues to cannibalise its human capital, sacrificing entire generations of conscripts and prisoners mobilised in a war of attrition that is slowly eating away at the Federation’s social sustainability. An empire forced to beg drones from Tehran and bullets from Pyongyang to fuel its artillery is not a superpower on the rise, but a system in agony that survives only thanks to an extractive parasitism and a war economy that is mortgaging its future.

Oreshnik, in this picture, is not a symbol of Russian strength, but of its political fragility

Ballistic terror becomes the only tool left to Moscow to compensate for its inability to produce a decisive victory on the ground. It serves to galvanise the home front through a permanent theatricalisation of technological power and, above all, to postpone the most dangerous moment for Vladimir Putin: that of a new mass mobilisation that could definitively break the pact between the Kremlin and Russian society. The hyper-technological weapon acts as a state anaesthetic for a population otherwise forced to reckon with the crude mathematics of zinc coffins returning from the Ukrainian front.

Russia today no longer fights to conquer territory but to freeze the political will of the West. This is why the real target of Oreshnik is not military, but psychological and political. Its use is scientifically calibrated to reactivate the Pavlovian reflexes of a part of the Western ruling classes: those who confuse prudence with preventive surrender and realism with acceptance of the Russian sphere of influence. These leaderships, terrified by the shadow of escalation, offer Putin the perfect alibi by invoking fake peace that, in practice, only means the unilateral disarmament of the victim.

Mosca observes all this with glacial lucidity

She knows that time plays in her favour not militarily, but politically. It does not have to win on the ground, it only needs to survive long enough to accelerate the decomposition of Western cohesion. Every time the West communicates hesitation, Moscow intensifies the pressure. Every endless debate over red lines is read by the Kremlin not as diplomatic prudence, but as a sign of psychological vulnerability. And it is here that the conflict’s most glaring paradox emerges: the Euro-Atlantic self-deterrence has become, in fact, the Russian General Staff’s best tactical ally.

While many European chancelleries wear themselves out over escalation discussions, Ukraine is turning into the real strategic laboratory of European defence. Kyiv does not respond to hypersonic blackmail by retreating, but by adapting. It absorbs the shock and retaliates according to an increasingly sophisticated asymmetrical logic: it strikes deep into Russian logistics, decapitates control centres, erodes military energy infrastructure, and inflicts mounting losses on Moscow’s elite units, including the Chechen Akhmat men. Without waiting for the gruelling times of EU integration, the Ukrainian army has become Europe’s shield, merging our fragmented military technology into a single, vital network of active deterrence.

Ukraine is proving something that many European elites still struggle to accept: Russia is not invincible. It is dangerous, brutal, resilient, but not invincible. The real strategic question, then, is not about Kyiv’s military capacity, but about Europe’s psychological resilience. Because the crux of the war is now clear: if the West accepts Oreshnik’s blackmail out of fear of escalation, it legitimises terror as an ordinary diplomatic tool. It means sanctioning that the possession of nuclear and hypersonic capabilities automatically confers the right to intimidate neighbouring democracies to the point of political neutralisation. And this is precisely the model the Kremlin wants to impose on the continent: a paralysed, frightened and progressively Finlandised Europe, incapable of exercising autonomous strategic sovereignty because it is constantly terrorised by the threat of escalation. Accepting this paradigm means abdicating the role of global player to reduce itself to a passive periphery, eternally blackmailable by anyone with a ballistic arsenal.

That is why the Russian challenge is not technological, but moral and political

Europe can either continue to view support for Kyiv as a temporary cost to be minimised, or it can finally realise that Ukraine today represents the continent’s only real shield. To callOreshnik ‘s bluff then means rejecting not only the Kremlin’s propaganda, but also the internal defeatism that amplifies its effects. Because Moscow’s greatest strategic victory would not be to conquer Kyiv, but to convince the Europeans that defending themselves is now pointless. If the West gives in to the fear narrative today, it decrees the structural failure of its own institutional order and the end of Europe.