Next Salami Slice: NATO's Attacks St. Petersburg Via Baltic States | Stas Krapivnik

## Introduction and drone strikes The recent wave of drone and missile strikes has done more than puncture calm skies over Russian cities; it has exposed a widening fault line in European security policy and pushed Moscow into a posture of restrained but palpable readiness. The conversation with Stas Krapivnik frames these strikes not as isolated tactical episodes but as data points in a strategic dilemma: how far will Western actors press their advantage around Russian peripheries before Moscow feels compelled to respond decisively? The attacks on St. Petersburg and the targeting of critical infrastructure—some damaged, some protected by improvised defenses—reveal both the vulnerabilities of modern urban and logistical networks and the adaptive resilience of civilian and corporate actors when state protection is insufficient. Krapivnik’s eyewitness tone brings texture to the abstract: sounds of interceptions in the night, makeshift latticework that blunted a drone’s blast at a server farm, and warehouses reverting to dispersed pre-consolidation models to survive. These details matter because they show how kinetic pressure translates into civilian behavioral changes, how private actors step into the gap where public systems are overstretched, and how limited strikes can have asymmetric symbolic and operational effects without yet forcing escalatory countermeasures from Moscow. ## Drone routes and Western involvement One of the conversation’s starkest assertions is that the drones which struck St. Petersburg did not originate solely from Ukrainian territory but transited through—or launched from—states within NATO’s immediate neighborhood. Tracking of civil air-raid alerts in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, combined with public messaging from Baltic defense officials, suggests an air corridor that implicates neighboring NATO members. Krapivnik’s point is legal and moral as much as operational: under the laws of neutrality, facilitating the use of one’s territory or airspace for attacks transforms a neutral posture into co-belligerence. This argument is consequential because it reframes Western denials of direct involvement as either disingenuous or dangerously negligent. If NATO-aligned states permit their airspace to be used, intentionally or passively, they effectively extend the battlefield into their sovereign territory. That extension exposes them to reciprocal targeting by Russia and removes the convenient fiction of purely Ukrainian agency. Whether Western planners intended such a corridor or turned a blind eye in the fog of proxy logistics, the strategic effect is the same: incremental normalization of operations that edge perilously close to collective confrontation. ## Oreshnik and the danger of escalation A recurring theme in the conversation is escalation latency—the period in which one side refrains from using certain capabilities despite having them. Krapivnik warns that lagging restraint can be catastrophic once the choice to employ strategic systems is taken. He describes the Oreshnik delivery system—a hypersonic glide vehicle concept that releases multiple kinetic “rods” from near-space—as emblematic of the latent destructive potential Russia could bring to bear. The capability, if deployed at scale, would be devastating to high-value industrial nodes, underground storage, and energy infrastructure across Europe. The point is not technological sensationalism but strategic deterrence: the longer Europe escalates through proxies and permissive airspace, the more attractive a massive, concentrated retaliatory strike becomes to Russian planners seeking to impose punishment and limit further intervention. Krapivnik’s forecast is chilling because it links granular battlefield developments—drones and Flamingo cruise attempts—to macro-level weapons posture. The implication is that there is a threshold at which Russia ceases to calibrate and begins to impose a cost calculus so steep that it reshapes European industrial capacity and civilian welfare. ## Escalation scenarios and Kaliningrad Kaliningrad occupies a special place in the escalation calculus. The enclave’s geography—Russian territory cut off from the mainland—creates a tempting focal point for NATO planners and simultaneously a red line for Moscow. Krapivnik outlines several scenarios: blockades of Kaliningrad, interdiction of corridor logistics such as the Suwałki gap, or even the insertion of peacekeeping forces. Any of these moves, from Russian legal vantage points, constitute acts of war or at least compelling provocations requiring countermeasures. What the conversation stresses is that NATO’s incremental steps toward restricting Kaliningrad, whether through sanctions, naval interdiction in international waters, or diplomatic isolation, could be interpreted by Russia as a casus belli. Moscow’s response could range from kinetic interdictions of supply lines to more extensive operations designed to reopen or secure the enclave. Krapivnik’s assessment is unforgivingly realist: if NATO assumes Russia will politely lobby or lodge diplomatic protests, it misunderstands how territorial integrity and national pride factor into Kremlin decision-making. In short, Kaliningrad is not merely a land mass; it is a strategic fuse that could, if mishandled, ignite a much broader fire. ## European unrest and Russia’s dilemma Domestically, European societies are already registering the strain. Krapivnik points to the specter of unrest driven by energy shortages, disrupted supply chains, and the political fallout of sustained economic pressure. Leaders who favor continued escalation face a double bind: they risk inflaming domestic opposition by prolonging crises while courting the very confrontations they claim to avoid. The conversation paints European elites as trapped between a performative maximalism—escalate to signal resolve—and the sober reality that further escalation will exact direct pain at home. For Russia, that tension presents both an opportunity and a dilemma. On the one hand, domestic pressures in European capitals create leverage for Moscow: the likelihood of fractures within NATO policymaking rises as hardship accumulates. On the other hand, the Kremlin must balance the desire to exploit these fractures against the catastrophic consequences of major retaliation that would also devastate parts of Russia and its economy. Krapivnik’s analysis suggests Moscow has chosen calibrated restraint so far, yet he warns this is a precarious equilibrium: continued pressure from Europe could force Moscow into options from which retreat would be politically and militarily costly. ## Front lines, encirclement and logistics Beyond headlines about drones and strategic weapons, the conversation returns repeatedly to the grinding mechanics of the front: encirclement attempts, supply routes, and the importance of logistics hubs. Krapivnik highlights how Ukraine’s dispersed production model and the decentralization of key facilities reduce the payoff of strikes on single large nodes. Conversely, large, concentrated targets—rail hubs, ammo plants, power stations—remain vulnerable to massive, high-precision strikes should Russia choose to escalate. This focus on logistics is important for two reasons. First, it exposes where war is won or lost: maneuver without supply is illusionary, and strategic gains can evaporate when lines tighten. Second, it shows why both sides are acutely sensitive to the tempo imposed by seasons and terrain. Autumn mud, fog, and winter’s freeze cycle shift the value of mobility versus firepower, affecting drone effectiveness, the survivability of convoys, and the practicability of large-scale offensives. Krapivnik’s reading is that both sides understand these rhythms and that timing will shape the next phase of operations. ## The Dnieper and possible Russian objectives The Dnieper River looms as a potential operational axis and symbolic boundary in Krapivnik’

NATO's Attacks St. Petersburg Via Baltic States | Stas Krapivnik Stas Krapivnik discusses drone strikes, Russia’s response, and the risk of a wider European war. Krapivnik argues that Western involvement and pressure around Kaliningrad could trigger dangerous escalation. They examine his assessment of Russian missile capabilities, European unrest, Ukrainian supply routes, and developments along the front. The conversation also considers Ukraine’s strategic depth, potential settlement terms, and how autumn mud, fog, and winter weather could affect drones, logistics, and the pace of military operations in Ukraine. Stas's Links: YouTube: https://www. youtube.com/@MrSlavikman X: https://x.com/STANISKRAPIVNIK Substack: https://zmeigarinich. substack.com Telegram (English): https://t.me/staswasthereenglish2 Telegram (Russian): https://t. me/stastydaiobratno Neutrality Studies Links: Neutrality Studies Substack: https://pascallottaz. substack.com Support Neutrality Studies: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Neutrality Studies shop: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Time Stamps 00:00 Introduction and drone strikes 05:03 Drone routes and Western involvement 13:30 Oreshnik and the danger of escalation 17:34 Escalation scenarios and Kaliningrad 26:09 European unrest and Russia’s dilemma 36:01 Front lines, encirclement and logistics 46:23 The Dnieper and possible Russian objectives 49:34 Settlement terms and the winter battlefield #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies today for an update with the always brilliant and the one and only Stas Krapivnik. I don't know about the brilliant, but the one and only I am, I think—the one and only. Well, Stas, can you catch us up on the updates, actually, that are happening? Because there were attacks again in St. Petersburg, but there were massive, massive attacks on Kyiv for the whole last two weeks. How are you reading the current situation? #Stas Krapivnik Well, you know, the attacks on Russia continue. There's over around, I think, 1,200, 1,300 drones that were sent in just the last two days. Yesterday there were drones. Even where I live, you can hear—occasionally, you can hear the drones getting shot down, because sound goes pretty far. You can hear the [unclear] of the short-range missiles taking them out. St. Petersburg got hit. Well, it's interesting too because it shows you the difference in initiative. In this case, St. Petersburg got hit. There was the oil terminal that got hit. They sent drones in. Again, there wasn't that many drones that actually got through. There was one drone that hit the Yandex server farm, which, by the way, did zero damage because, unlike the oil refinery, Yandex built cages around there. And we're not talking cages. We're not talking, you know, chain-link fences. -- 1 of 18 -- We're talking about pipe that's about a two-inch pipe, or about five centimeters wide, that's just built up, like the latticework that gets built up around buildings when buildings are under construction, that type of piping. And they built it all around the buildings. So the drone flies into it, blew up into it, did almost no damage to the pipes either, by the way. And there's photos of the drone burning on top of the pipes, of this latticework. So, yeah, zero damage. It works. The difference is Yandex didn't wait for the government to get to them. The government does have limited resources, like everybody else. Lots of targets need to be fixed. They went on their own initiative and just did, as opposed to these oil giants that for some reason continue to wait for the government to do it for them. #Pascal So basically, just to be clear, so Yandex and Ozon probably too, they started to put up their own drone defenses. And since most of these drones are relatively lightweight explosives, they need to really explode in the thing in order to do any significant damage. So if you can keep just two meters away and explode there, it's basically, unless you're unlucky with a fire, you're good. That's the kind of idea. #Stas Krapivnik Right, right. With Ozon, you know, even if... I think there was a fire with Ozon in their warehouse. But the thing is with Ozon and Wildberries, they... the way they avoid the drones is... they've switched back to their old model, which is small dispersed warehouses, no longer in the large consolidated centralized warehousing. So at this point, yeah, you can hit the big ones. There's not that much in there, if anything's left in there. And finding all the little ones is a lot harder, and targeting them, and it's a lot less damage that's done. And they did this relatively quickly afterwards, after the strikes started. So by August, there were, I mean, Ozon and Yandex Market and Wildberries. That's the one I'm missing. They're all still functioning. I've ordered stuff from them. You can get it. Sometimes you get it in a couple of days. Sometimes you get it in one day. So all of those warehouses in function, they just went to a less efficient model, which is the model they all had beforehand, before doing the huge centralized warehouses. So again, that was a temporary victory. The counter-strike wiped out most of the warehousing in Ukraine. That's the point. Russia can counter-escalate a lot further, a lot faster, and a lot harder. They chose not to. Unfortunately, the West, as usual, mistakes someone choosing not to do something with not having the ability to do something. If I choose not to shoot you with my pistol, doesn't mean I don't have that pistol and it's not loaded, and I can't do it. And if pushed hard enough, I will do it. And this is what we've seen since August, and continued to escalate. Now, the big thing about this, of course, was that the drones came from the West. #Pascal -- 2 of 18 -- Can you speak to that first? What do we know about where they came from? Because I think NATO still pretends that this is all, like, Ukraine's doing, right? Without any Western hand in it. #Stas Krapivnik Well, yeah, they kind of pretend in a very poor way. First of all, to begin with, the drones... First of all, to begin with, yeah, that's anonymous. Oh, sorry. The drones came from the bay into the city. The tracking has been that they came from Estonia. And then the Ukrainians were trying to say that they somehow skirted between Russia and Belarus, right up the border, got somehow around all of the Russian electronic and radar systems, and then hit St. Petersburg. I guess flew out to the bay, turned around, came back in, which is ludicrous. People started tracking the air raid notifications in, first of all, Estonia, then Latvia, and then Lithuania. So you can start figuring out what the flight path is. And then the defense minister of Lithuania—I can look up his name here in a second. That young guy. Yes, some guy from Lithuania. One second, I will tell you his name. Um... #Stas Krapivnik Just reading through it. Defense Minister Robertas Kalinas. For some reason, Lithuanian names look a lot like Greek, but I have no idea why, because they're not in any form related. Robertas Kalinas, matter of fact, we told the journalists, yeah, they all come from Poland. So, again, by international law, since neither Poland nor the Baltic states have done anything to keep their airspace neutral— that is, they have not resisted the use of their airspace or land space or water space for whatever reason, or whatever it may be, in this case airspace—neutral, they are now co-belligerents in this conflict. Not just—no, they were co-belligerents to begin with. But under international law, Russia has cause to declare war on all three of those, or four of those, I'm sorry, and strike them back. They don't do anything. They basically encourage and provide an air corridor for enemy munitions to fly through. So therefore, you're now part of that conflict. That's how the laws of neutrality work. They were neutral, per se, because they try to pretend, or at least they're proclaiming neutrality, that they're not really at war, even though they've sent material and men just under mercenary pretenses. But now they're obviously quite happy to allow their airspace, their territory, to be used for launching attacks, in which case they're absolutely co-belligerents. #Pascal So, but what is the reaction so far from the Russian side? I mean, from the official reaction, did the Kremlin make any statements, or the Ministry of Defense, about this, about the flight path of these missiles and drones? Probably just drones, right? #Stas Krapivnik -- 3 of 18 -- Yeah, drones. They've launched a bunch of missiles, Flamingo missiles, into Russia. You want to talk about the biggest dud that's probably been created in a very long time in military technology. The Flamingo has an impressive 99-point-like, almost 99% shoot-down rate. For those who don't know what the Flamingo is, it's the upgraded V-1, Nazi V-1 missile. It looks just like it. It's a little bit different. And it's built in—it's a British missile. I mean, let's be realistic about this. The Ukrainians slap them together, put fuel in it, launch them, and then they all get shut down. They are a dud. They're quite literally a dud that the British taxpayer gets to pay for, first and foremost. So far, it's the same noises that get said every time. So we'll see. We'll see how this develops. Though, in the arsenal of "do we want to expand this war," Russia has more than enough casus belli to strike just about anything in Central and Eastern Europe. Western Europe, for that matter, too. #Pascal I mean, the Europeans, NATO, has been salami-slicing itself into Russia for the entirety of this war, right? That whole time, from one thing to the next. And right now, it seems to me that what they're actually aiming for is to provoke Russia into an attack on EU territory in order for them to go to their population and say, like, "Hey, we're so shocked. We told you. See, we told you the Russians are evil. We didn't do anything. It's an unprovoked attack. We've been just good bystanders. We've just been friendly to Ukraine to help them against the bad invasion." And now the Russians are attacking us because the Russians are crazy. They're lunatics. They're losing the war. Putin is losing. And now he's expanding because he's trying to camouflage his own mistakes. That's what they want, right? They want Russia to do that so that they can cry wolf. And then I don't know what the next step is. I don't think they know what the next step is. But the point is, doing that would expand the war, and it would increase the headache on Russia for how to wind it down again. So what do you see as now the current talk in Moscow? #Stas Krapivnik Yeah, you're absolutely right. The European leadership was the underpants gnomes. South Park, have you ever heard of them? Yeah, yeah, yeah, there they are. #Pascal They're exactly that. #Stas Krapivnik The underpants gnomes, the ones that steal everybody's underpants at the laundromats, and they have a business plan. First, we steal the underpants. Then, big question mark, equals profits. And this was the Europeans: first, we provoke Russia into attacking us. Then, big question mark, equals victory. And you're right. They're at that point. What are we going to do? We're going to win. How -- 4 of 18 -- are you going to do that? We're going to win, because we're just superior. We're just going to win. The same countries that are now burning, by the way. #Pascal But the problem with insanity is that even if the guy with the chainsaw is mentally insane, he still has the goddamn chainsaw. Yes, he does. I mean, at some point you need to get him into the corset, right? Into a little cell. But he's not there, right? So I just don't know how to approach that, because it's actually really... It's quite evil to do this and then to always go further and further and further in order to test one more red line. And it seems that now we're at the red line of, like, oh, why don't