Whoever thought that U.S.-Russia tension, and the threat of war between the superpowers, would diminish naturally with the Dec. 7 videoconference summit between Presidents Biden and Putin, hoped in vain. Despite remarks by President Biden himself, the extreme belligerence of Secretary of State Blinken and British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss at the G7 ministerial meeting Dec. 10, and their refusal to step back regarding Ukraine joining NATO, have combined with a wild nuclear bombardment threat by Senate Armed Forces Committee second ranking Republican member Roger Wicker, to keep the crisis just as intense, and even to raise its pre-war-like temperature. The inevitable Russian response came today.

No citizen can assume that war will be averted except with the strength of his or her own efforts in the direction pointed by Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s article-length statement over the past weekend, which cites former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s sharp call for sanity on Twitter.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned today, Dec. 13, that Russia would be forced to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe in response to its conviction that NATO will do the same in Ukraine after placing “ABM” missile launchers in Poland and Romania. “It will be a confrontation, this will be the next round, the appearance of such resources on our side,” he told RIA Novosti news agency. Ryabkov said Russia would do this if NATO continued refusing to engage with it to prevent that escalation. He cited “indirect indications” that NATO was closing in on re-deploying intermediate range nukes for the first time since the 1980s—including NATO’s restoring last month the 56th Artillery Command which operated nuclear-capable Pershing missiles during the Cold War. And Russian President Putin told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson today, according to Reuters, that NATO was directly threatening Russia with potential war by expanding military activity in Ukraine.