It’s time to ring the alarm bells. Fears of World War III have often been overblown, but as of late 2025, it’s seeming like an increasing possibility to the point it could break out any day now.
Due to the grinding war in Ukraine, Russia is suffering casualties for incremental gains. On top of that, fuel shortages are spreading across the country. Instead of pulling out of Ukraine, or even accepting concessions by the United States that are conciliatory, Russia only continues to double down on its war effort.
Not only does Putin continue to relentlessly press on, he has also been flying drones and, more recently, fighter jets into NATO airspace. This coincides with the Zapad-2025 military exercises between Russia and Belarus, which involve units large enough to effectively split NATO into two parts by severing the border between Poland and Lithuania. This would simultaneously link Belarus to Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave (similar “drills” happened right before the invasion of Ukraine a few years back).
Instead of promoting a survivalist instinct like what was seen during the Soviet period, the Russian government and media today are conditioning the Russian citizenry with nuclear rhetoric to believe they will outlast Westerners in nuclear war instead of framing nuclear war as mutually assured destruction.
We tend to defer to the realist assumption that all governments make decisions for their self-preservation. But Russia today is not the pragmatic authoritarian bureaucracy the USSR once was. It is a personalistic dictatorship with nihilistic tendencies that is either in denial of its decay or simply doesn’t care about its long-term fate. And its primary deterrent — the U.S. — has retreated into isolationism, further emboldening Putin’s opportunism.