HELMER: Tomahawks Put Europe in Russia’s Crosshairs

John Helmer doesn’t hedge. When asked about the claim that Russia is “a paper tiger,” he calls the White House line false—on battlefield progress, on negotiations, and on intent—and says there are three ways to read it: madness, a domestic political pitch, or messaging to Moscow; he discards “madness” and argues the real game is U.S. domestic politics with added provocation. He adds that the Anchorage understandings Putin believed he had with Trump (Anchorage, Alaska, Aug. 16—“five… six weeks ago”) have been “blown away,” even as the Kremlin’s public line stays bland while cautioning that shipping cruise missiles won’t be a “game-changer” (3:07, 11:40, 13:15).

Pressed on Tomahawks, Helmer stresses they are nuclear-capable and recalls Putin’s long-standing warning about Aegis Ashore sites in Poland and Romania: you cannot tell a conventional from a nuclear load in flight, so those sites are “in our crosshairs” (19:05, 20:02). He adds a political wrinkle: Washington wants **Europeans and Ukrainians as operators—“their skins at risk”—**while the U.S. supplies satellites, targeting, and live intel, and Europe picks up the bill. For Moscow, that means any retaliation would fall first on the European or Ukrainian crews operating the systems, the parties seen as the direct belligerents, rather than on the U.S. itself (20:22, 21:01).

Helmer’s bottom line is escalation management, not apocalypse: he says Moscow won’t go nuclear, yet it has a non-nuclear answer in Oreshnik, already deployed with some units and slated for Belarus by year-end, while U.S. rhetoric dares Russia to “prove” it isn’t a paper tiger. The question is whether the next Russian move will be Oreshnik—quiet, deniable, decisive—rather than anything Washington has prepared the public to understand (22:39, 23:02).