As war rhetoric from the UK and its Western European allies reaches a fever pitch, Russia has warned of nuclear consequences if the West follows through on its threats. With no letup in sight, RT is tracking the escalation and debunking the psyops in real time.
In a statement described by the Kremlin as an attempt to “cool down hot heads” in Europe, three Russian embassies warned on Wednesday that Russia is willing to use its entire arsenal, “including nuclear weapons,” if NATO takes military action against Kaliningrad or blockades the Russian exclave.
The statement comes after Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called for a buildup of troops at the border of Kaliningrad, and after military exercises that the ministry views as preparations for a blockade of the Russian exclave.
Tensions are currently high after a week of intense fearmongering from British officials and journalists, in which retired generals told the BBC that the public must be “psychologically prepared” for conflict with Russia, a Labour Party thought leader suggested that dissidents and Russia sympathizers be “locked up,” and former Brexit Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg told British men and women that they “may have to die” in a cataclysmic European war.
This was a marked shift in rhetoric from the British elite. Since 2022, five successive prime ministers have insisted that the UK will arm Ukraine “for as long as it takes” to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, but only a handful of bellicose generals and analysts have predicted an imminent military clash with Moscow. The tactical situation has not changed, and Russia has repeatedly insisted it has no interest in a wider conflict with NATO, but talking heads from both the Labour and Conservative parties are now speaking of war as a done deal.
Meanwhile, Sky News ran ‘The Wargame’ all week – a bizarre five-episode reality show in which real politicians and military chiefs gamed out a hypothetical Russian invasion for the cameras.
Britain’s political and media class also attempted to spin the arrest of five men near a US airbase on Sunday as an “attack” on the country, until the men were let go after counterterror police found no explosives, and apparently no evidence of a terrorist plot. Nevertheless, the incident was pinned on Iran, forcing Tehran to issue a sharp condemnation of the “malicious speculations published by some British individuals and media outlets.”
On the continent, Spain’s El Mundo claimed that the CIA had learned of a potential Russian plan to launch drones at France, Italy, or Spain from ships in the Mediterranean. The claim, attributed to Lithuanian intelligence, was quickly shot down by Paris and Rome, as Finnish President Alexander Stubb appealed for calm across the West.
The stakes – and the likelihood of miscalculation – are high. RT is watching and listening, and debunking the most outrageous war propaganda in real time.
30 September 2026
Russia has issued a stark response to the escalatory policies of the West, warning the “irresponsible and dangerous European political elite” that they’re playing “a dangerous game.”
“There should be no mistake – Russia would be ready to use all its arsenal, including nuclear weapons, to defend its territory if NATO countries try to isolate Kaliningrad region from the rest of the country,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement published on Wednesday.
In such a scenario, Russia could launch “preemptive strikes against centers of decision-making in the Alliance countries already at the early stage of the conflict,” the statement continued.
The statement comes after Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called for a buildup of troops at the border of Kaliningrad, and after military exercises that the ministry views as preparations for a blockade of the Russian exclave.
29 September 2026
With Burnham sweeping the Fairford farce under the rug, we’re stopping our live updates for the afternoon. However, the Europeans are apparently determined to milk every drop of political capital from Estonia's “hybrid war” claims, and we’ll be watching how their words turn into action.
For anyone who missed our live coverage of the Fairford incident yesterday, our explainer here will bring you up to speed. As always, stick with RT as we track the war propaganda and debunk the psyops in real time.
Burnham has just wrapped up his speech without a single mention of the Fairford incident. His right-wing opponents say that he dropped the ball and allowed a group of Iran-linked terrorists to get within a hair’s breadth of blowing up a US military base, but a simpler theory says that they were diesel thieves caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
With diesel at an all-time high of £2 ($2.64) per liter in the UK, there’s certainly motive for criminals.
Western leaders and journalists say that these unprovable drone incursions and fires are examples of Russia’s “hybrid war” against Europe. It’s a term that Moscow sees as loaded with double standards, and treats with derision, as seen in this exchange between Lavrov and BBC journalist Steve Rosenberg.
“Are you referring to when we destroy the drones and missiles that Britain and continental Europe supply to Ukraine, which are then fired at us? Is that what you mean by hybrid war?” Lavrov responds to Rosenberg.
Regarding Estonia’s accusations, the Europe-wide response is following a predictable pattern. Wild claims from the Baltic states are taken at face value by Western European leaders, and used to justify hikes in military spending and further centralization of EU powers.
Denmark used claims of Russian drone incursions last year – which have never been proven – to push for the funding of a “drone wall” at an EU meeting in Copenhagen. EU defense ministers used Estonia’s arson claim to justify the creation of a new “emergency security protocol” and “European Defense Union” at a meeting on Monday.
Lithuania’s allegation last week – that Russia could launch drones at France, Italy, or Spain from ships in the Mediterranean – was a step too far, however, and was rejected by Paris and Madrid.
Back in the UK, Burnham just turned to foreign policy, promising to be “steadfast in my support for Ukraine” and “stand up to threats wherever they come from, whether Russia, Iran, or anywhere.”
That’s a broad swipe at the UK and US’ chief geopolitical rivals, but Burnham didn’t connect either state to the RAF Fairford incident. It’s looking more and more likely that there was no ‘terror plot’ at the military base.
On the continent, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna has just accused Russia of ordering the “sabotage” of a drone factory in Tallinn last month. The Milrem Robotics plant, which manufactures ground drones for Ukraine, caught fire last month.
“We can conclude with certainty that the arson attack…was an act of sabotage ordered by the special services of the Russian Federation,” Tsahkna wrote on X.
Moscow denies any role in the blaze, but Ukraine’s Western backers have accepted Tsahkna’s claims. The UK, France, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden all pledged on Tuesday to increase military aid to Kiev in response.
Burnham’s speech so far has focused on domestic policy, with no mention of the Fairford incident.
By contrast, Foreign Secretary Ed Milliband opened his speech yesterday with a dire warning about “the threats our country faces,” while Mahmood was declaring “those who mean us harm and plot violence on our soil” would “never defeat us,” even after it emerged that the five suspects were released and no explosives found in their vehicles.
As British media analysts described the incident as a potential Iranian terror plot, Tehran condemned their “unfounded and malicious speculations,” and the rise of “Iranophobia propaganda in the UK.”
Welcome back to RT’s Escalation Watch, where today we’re keeping an eye on British Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s headline speech at his Labour Party’s annual conference. We still don’t know anything about the Fairford ‘terror’ incident, and it’s unclear whether Burnham will sweep the debacle under the rug, or double down on the anti-terror rhetoric like his home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, did yesterday.
28 September 2026
Before Iranian proxies or diesel thieves were blamed for the Fairford debacle, here’s a reminder that Britain’s state broadcaster brought on a ‘military expert’ to blame Russia within hours of the news breaking.
“It could be a Russian strategy,” former RAF Air Vice-Marshal Sean Bell told the BBC on Monday. “The Russians have been very overt as well as covert about their attacks in the cyber domain…so this could actually be part of them.”
It seems that the script was written long before the facts came out.
Despite the fact that no explosives were found and all five suspects were released on bail, British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is still trying to spin the incident as a counterterrorism victory and milk it for propaganda value.
”Thanks to the Army’s explosive ordinance disposal team, the scene is now safe,” Mahmood said at the Labour Party’s conference, omitting the fact that there was apparently no ordinance to dispose of.
“To all those who mean us harm and plot violence on our soil, let this be a reminder: you will never defeat us,” she added.
There is still no evidence that anyone plotted violence, and every new development this afternoon has suggested that the incident was not terror-related or connected with any foreign nation or group.
Back in Fairford, multiple UK media outlets are reporting that no “viable explosives” were found in any of the three vans. That’s another point for the ‘diesel theft’ theorists, and directly contradicts The Guardian, which claimed that “armed officers found explosives in three vans.”
The Guardian would be due a lecture on the dangers of spreading “disinformation,” if senior officials and its media competitors hadn’t jumped on the same bandwagon.
Oftentimes, the most bellicose Western politicians and analysts discuss war with Russia under the assumption that all 32 NATO member states would automatically be involved. This, Russian International Affairs Council President Dmitry Trenin wrote for RT on Sunday, is a “myth.”
Article 5 of the 1949 Washington Treaty was carefully written in order to limit the US’ exposure to a potential nuclear war in Europe. It requires each member only “to take such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area” in the event of a conflict.
In ‘The Wargame’, the US does not intervene, leaving the UK to fight a nuclear war with Russia minus 88% of NATO’s nuclear arsenal. That some of the series’ participants still consider such a war winnable illustrates just how divorced from reality its premise really is.
‘The Wargame’ is not the first series of its kind, or even of its name. Back in 1965, the BBC commissioned a “pseudo-documentary” called ‘The War Game’, which depicted an all-out nuclear war between the UK and Soviet Union. Unlike Sky News’ series, the 1965 production juxtaposed calls for war from public figures with the bleak aftermath of a nuclear attack – mass deaths, starvation, and the breakdown of law and order.
It was never aired, with the BBC determining that it would be “too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting.”
Sky showed no such restraint, with its series seemingly designed to turn dovish politicians into Russia hawks, and manufacture consent for the kind of military spending hikes that make the worst-case-scenario depicted in 1965 more likely.
Even before they took to the airwaves this morning, Sky News’ analysts had the public primed to view the Fairford incident as a terror plot. Over five nights last week, ‘The Wargame’ treated viewers to a “constructed documentary” depiction of a Russian attack on the UK, which began with the assassination of two RAF officers and the sinking of a British vessel by a Russian submarine.
A cast of British politicians and military chiefs then decide, in front of a live audience, whether to use nuclear weapons against Russia. Their decision is never revealed.
Defense Secretary Wes Streeting praised the show for boosting public support for increased military spending. At a preview screening in London, Streeting thanked its producers for writing his “spending review submission.”
Burnham is currently chairing a COBRA (Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms) meeting to discuss the RAF Fairford incident. Speaking to reporters earlier this afternoon, the prime minister said that the meeting would “make sure we have the full picture, the full situation very clearly in our sights and so maybe we’ll say more about that later today.”
On social media, some alternate explanations have begun to emerge, including the theory that the suspects were common criminals attempting to steal agricultural diesel from farmers in the area.
This theory would explain the plastic drums visible in aerial footage of the vans, and the surprise decision to grant the men bail. It’s just a theory for now, but it’s a potentially embarrassing one for Milliband, Braw, and the other politicians and experts who jumped straight to describing the incident as an “attack.”
Fairford is dominating the headlines today, but the media’s response is not happening in a vacuum. The rampant speculation – particularly Sky News’ security expert mentioning Iran and Russia in connection with the incident – comes after weeks of panic-mongering in the UK and mainland Europe, all of it centered around the supposed threat of a Russian attack.
If you’re just catching up, RT columnist Tarik Cyril Amar broke down the “absurdities, inconsistencies, and plain silliness” of the war rhetoric in an op-ed last week, concluding that Britain’s “insane and malevolent” elites “want you ready to die for a war they keep imagining.”
The last sentence is key: Russia has repeatedly declared that it has no intention of or interest in a war with the UK. The threat remains imaginary.
It’s worth taking a moment to look at what exactly happened at RAF Fairford, a Royal Air Force base used solely by the US Air Force.
What we know for certain is that five men, described by counter-terror police as residents of London, were arrested near the base on Sunday morning, after a local farmer alerted authorities to three suspicious vans parked in the area.
Everything else is unclear. The farmer told Sky News that it took almost six hours for police to respond to her calls, and that she saw at least seven other men escape into nearby woodland. Multiple British media outlets have said that the operation was not “intelligence-led,” meaning the men were not under surveillance, but US President Donald Trump suggested that American and British agents had the five men “under review for a long time.”
Bomb squad robots searched the three vans, but it is unclear whether any explosives were found. Further information about the suspects, including where they are being detained, is being kept under wraps. According to a photograph published by the BBC, some of the men appear to be Middle Eastern or north African in origin.
Although Prime Minister Andy Burnham has urged the public “not to speculate while the authorities establish the full facts,” several media outlets and analysts have fingered Iran as the chief suspect. Tehran has said that it “categorically rejects and strongly condemns the recent unfounded and malicious speculations.”
The five men arrested at RAF Fairford have been released on bail, but are still under investigation, counterterror police chief Laurence Taylor has said.
The decision suggests that police didn’t find enough evidence to extend their detention, but Taylor insisted that “they absolutely remain under investigation.”
Nor has Taylor shut down speculation about foreign involvement. “We are considering this from every possible angle,” he said, “including that this may be activity committed by proxies, or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly, working on behalf of a foreign state.”
Welcome to RT’s live coverage of the wave of escalation spreading through political and media circles across Western Europe. You join us on Monday afternoon, and despite the fact that we’ve seen little concrete information about the apparent terror plot at RAF Fairford yesterday, British officials and talking heads have already put their own spin on events.
Speaking at a Labour Party conference Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband described the incident as an example of “the threats our country faces,” and called on the public to “roll up our sleeves” and “fight for our values.” Miliband did not assign blame for the supposed attack plot, but still insisted that there would be a “fight” ahead.
On Sky News, Elizabeth Braw – a ‘security expert’ at the NATO-funded Atlantic Council – warned that “conflict is coming to the UK.”
“It’s not going to be just Iran. We already know that Russia is commissioning people to carry out attacks in the UK,” she claimed. Iran has denied any role in the Fairford ‘plot’, and there is no evidence that Russia has carried out, or paid anyone else to carry out “attacks” in the UK.