A quick, strategic assessment of Putin's use of the Oreshnik missile in a strike against #Ukraine. In short, this was a political strike not a military one. 1/10 🧵 
2/ Putin used this missile as a direct response to recent U.S. administration decisions to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied ATACMs missiles against a wider range of targets inside Russia, particularly targets related to the Ukrainian campaign in Kursk. He notes this in his speech.
3/ An additional driver was the permission given by U.K. and French governments for the use of their long-range air launched missiles against targets in Russia.
4/ Putin is also seeking to highlight in his speech that this was a regrettable response, but a necessary one due to Western escalation by their allowing Western long-range weapons to be used inside Russia. In essence Putin is saying here that “it wasn’t me that escalated; it was you.”
5/ Another reason Putin conducted the strike was to message to the U.S. administration, now in transition, that they should not provide any more advanced capabilities for Ukraine. Putin is trying to get the message across that “you have reached our limit of patience.”
6/ Another reason Putin may have used this weapon is that he may have decided that he needed to do something besides nuclear sabre rattling in order to influence U.S. (as well as European) political decision-making about the future of the war, support for Ukraine and any potential negotiations.
7/ The Russian president may perceive that his mentioning nuclear weapons, having done so frequently, is of diminishing value in getting his message across about what he sees as NATO interference in his genocidal war. He needed a different signal to Washington, and he chose to do so with a different kind of weapon.
8/ But Putin isn’t only messaging Washington D.C. here. He has used a weapon with a range of over 5000 kilometres, which could therefore be used against almost any target in Europe and the United Kingdom. This is a message to Europe, not only about their support for Ukraine, but also about Russia’s capacity and willingness to influence policy related to defence and security well beyond Ukraine.
9/ Finally, back to that Putin phrase “the regional conflict in Ukraine provoked by the West has assumed elements of a global nature.” Putin’s phrase here shows that the ‘bad quad’ of Iran, Russia, China and North Korea need to be considered as a single, global threat and that Western strategy must both accept and plan for this alignment of authoritarians.
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