It started with a peace move no one wanted, and ended with an experimental missile strike so rare in war that Moscow gave Washington 30 minutes’ notice, CNN reports.

The past seven days have fundamentally changed Ukraine’s long conflict, and at breakneck speed ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. The past week marks a seismic escalation.

The White House publicly authorized Ukraine on Sunday to launch missiles it supplied to Russia, which it rushed to do on Monday. Moscow responded by using an experimental medium-range missile, which reaches supersonic speeds and has a multiple warhead system normally reserved for nuclear payloads, to strike Dnipro on Thursday. Putin claimed that the “Oreshnik” could avoid all Western air defenses.

Washington is desperate to change Ukraine’s declining status on the front line, and Russia, the aggressor from the start, is turning to more dangerous ways to restore the deterrent value it has lost over the past three years.

Neither the US nor Russia are likely to come into direct conflict, but instead become increasingly involved in the increasingly global Ukraine struggle.

It is a rapid deterioration. Seven days ago, anger surrounded unexpected peace talks.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz unilaterally called Russian President Vladimir Putin, ending the Kremlin chief’s two-year isolation from major Western leaders. Scholz was seeking to curry favor with pro-Russian voters in eastern Germany ahead of national elections, but justified his phone call by saying that if Trump was going to talk to Moscow, Europe should too. Ukraine and Poland were outraged. France and the United Kingdom appeared to react more quietly.

It is unlikely that the White House’s decision to use long-range weapons stemmed from Scholtz’s phone call, with President Joe Biden’s motivation for authorizing the use of missiles inside Russia fueled by the involvement of North Korean troops in Russia’s war . Similarly, Putin’s decision to launch the Oreshnik missile was likely Moscow’s decision to “climb another rung” on a carefully prepared “ladder” of progressive escalation. Moscow and Washington have been sketching these moves for months, even if they were a little surprised by their rival’s implementation.

The precise details of the Oreshnik missile seem important to Vladimir Putin’s message. Much remains unclear, but most estimates and Putin’s own comments agree that this is a new missile, likely hypersonic, not nuclear (this time), but capable of carrying multiple warheads in a manner normally reserved for nuclear payloads.

Putin said that at 3 kilometers per second, its speed meant all Western air defenses were useless. U.S. and NATO officials have called the device “medium-range” and “experimental,” comments that initially sounded like they were trying to play down its importance but may actually indicate a broader rift with Moscow.

In 2019, President Trump withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), a landmark act to limit the development of such weapons, accusing Russia of violating it. Western officials’ insistence that the missile – which appears nuclear-capable – was of “medium” range was perhaps a signal of Russia’s continued pursuit of such weapons outside the now-defunct INF. Perhaps this was also a message to Trump that Moscow was busy building the weapons he supported in his first term.

Ukraine believed the missile was linked to the missile system also known as “Kedr”. Yuri Budanov, head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence service, said on Friday that it was a “medium-range ballistic missile, carrying nuclear weapons. The fact that they used him in a non-nuclear version … is a warning that they have completely lost their minds.” Budanov said Ukraine estimated two Kedr prototypes had been built by October, but insisted it was “not a mass product, thank God”.

The coming weeks will tell if Oreshnik is a one-off message or a new tactic. Its use raised more concern in Kiev after the US Embassy was hastily closed on Wednesday, citing an aerial threat, fueling fears that Moscow was looking for “tools in its toolbox” that it had reserved for a final existential struggle with a major power. .

However, the most disturbing news of the week may not have so much to do with the loud geopolitical squabbles and ominous fireworks over the city of Dnipro.

The UK’s Defense Intelligence Agency, normally a staunch supporter of the Ukrainian military, announced on Thursday that the front line was more “volatile” than at any time since the invasion. That’s a euphemism for Kiev’s forces fighting on the front lines, and it fits CNN’s persistently bleak reports from military and other sources.

The situation is grim in every direction. South of Kharkiv, Russia advances near the city of Kupyansk. Supply lines are under threat around the eastern Donbas region. Even southern Zaporizhia appears to be under more pressure, and Moscow is persistently trying to push Ukraine out of its border region of Kursk.

The Biden administration may be rushing to help with anti-personnel mines and announcing more ammunition, but change is happening right now, in trenches where snow is settling. They seem poised, on the most optimistic reading, to at least give Moscow the upper hand territorially for a bleak winter.

Trump’s presidency has accelerated the debate on negotiations. However, the immediate response was nothing more than a persistent rush to escalate the hot war in the face of its… possible freeze. The acute danger is that this rush to a better negotiating position develops its own, unstoppable momentum.