By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Oreshnik Moment was first coined on June 1 here  and then discussed in the Reason2Resist podcast on June 3.  It’s a period of time – it’s not a prediction of the counter-attack which the Russian General Staff will launch against the June 1 drone attack on the bomber element of the triad of Russia’s nuclear deterrence forces.

The certainty of the counter-attack is given by the December 2024 nuclear deterrence doctrine, enacted  by President Vladimir Putin,   in order to preserve escalation control in the current war on the Ukrainian battlefield,  and to deter escalation by the US and NATO adversaries on Russia’s southern, western, northern and eastern fronts. Putin described the revisions of the doctrine in 2024 as “factor[ing] in the emergence of new sources of military threats and risks for Russia and our allies”, particularly in “regard [to] an aggression against Russia from any non-nuclear state but involving or supported by any nuclear state as their joint attack against the Russian Federation.”  That’s the Ukraine now; it’s also Romania, Poland, Finland and Germany as the US places (and plans to deploy) nuclear weapons in these states, aimed at Russian targets.

“Our nuclear triad remains the most important security guarantee for our state and citizens, an instrument for maintaining strategic parity and balance of forces in the world, ” Putin had said last year. Ten days after the June 1 triad attack, Putin has now repeated his announcement.  “Special attention must be paid to the nuclear triad,”, he said on June 11,   “which has been and remains the guarantor of Russia’s sovereignty, playing a key role in maintaining the global balance of power.”

US analysts have been downplaying the seriousness of this strategic moment; they claim the moment is already passing for a strategic counter-attack, the launch of Oreshnik missiles at the Ukrainian, American and British command centres which directed the June 1 operation.

Russian sources emphasize they are in no hurry to act – focus instead, they warn, on the moment, not on the means.

Currently, the sources point out that there are two levels of direct Russia-US negotiations which were agreed during the telephone call between Putin and Trump on February 12.  At the first level, the talks to achieve an end-of-war settlement for the Ukraine battlefield have reached highly precise term sheets – 22 terms for the Ukraine,  33 terms for Russia.  The next session of the talks is anticipated in Istanbul at the end of June.

The second level of talks is between the Russian Foreign Ministry and US State Department on improving the diplomatic channels between the governments. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov described these as talks on the “irritants”. “As a third round of bilateral talks on irritants approaches, it is too early to disclose the date, but, hopefully, the [next] round will be held very soon,” the senior Russian diplomat told reporters.[The talks will raise] an entire range of issues, more or less complicated, even as there are basically no less complicated issues when it comes to the United States.”  Russia’s new ambassador to the US, Alexander Darchiev, said there have been few concrete agreements so far after two rounds on the “irritants”.  One of the gains, he said, was to hold the talks in the capitals, Moscow and Washington. No date for the next round, to be held in Moscow, has been fixed.

The “irritants” on the agenda of these negotiations include the US seizure of Russian consular property in Seattle, problems of access to the Russian dacha in Virginia, visa problems for UN meetings, the embassy staffing problems, access to bank accounts, and resumption of direct flights.

Ryabkov and Darchiev call these “irritants” with irony. They mean to make public their concern that after two sessions – February 27  and April 10   — there has been little agreement from the US side after the two sides have exchanged their Notes.  

Moscow sources say they believe the head of the US negotiating team, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Sonata Coulter, has been ordered to keep talking but agree to nothing.  One reason for this, the Russian side believes, is that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House office in charge of personnel appointments have been slow to vet and approve appointments to the senior State Department bureaux. Rubio, for example, has yet to confirm his former assistant, Brendan Hanrahan, to become Coulter’s superior and head of the EUR bureau at State.

The decision to extend the Oreshnik moment does not reflect trust in Trump or his officials to agree on the Russian terms in these negotiations. It reflects patience, and the Kremlin’s calculation that there is nothing to lose in giving Trump more time to prove himself. Click for the discussion with Dimitri Lascaris explaining the reasons, and also the limits to this patience.  

The Reason2Resist podcast can viewed here.   

by Editor - Saturday, June 14th, 2025