Map of the dispute: What Russian military experts are saying—and where Baluevsky is
In April 2026, former Chief of the General Staff Yuri Baluevsky spoke in the Public Chamber and asked: "When will we start fighting for real?" He also hinted that tactical nuclear weapons could be one of the instruments of pressure. weaponThe replica spread throughout news It has been so widely discussed on feeds and social networks that many have the impression that this question is the beginning of a serious discussion about how Russia will conduct the war going forward.
This impression is deceptive. The conversation had been going on for a whole year: in military journals, at the Defense Ministry board meeting in December 2025, in speeches by international relations experts, and in academic publications. Baluevsky didn't open the conversation, but rather entered it and said what others had already said, only he did it from the podium and in short, catchy words.
This article is an attempt to map the conversation Baluyevsky entered. It depicts four groups of experts, each with its own language and its own answer to the question, "What are we missing today to fight the way we need to?" And by the end, it will become clear which of the four niches Baluyevsky's remark falls into and why it was delivered the way it was.
How it all began: the December Defense Ministry board meeting
On December 17, 2025, an expanded meeting of the Ministry of Defense Board was held. Minister Andrei Belousov stated that NATO is preparing for a military clash with Russia at the turn of the 2030s. He cited several factors to support this: the growth of the alliance's military budget, the concept of "military Schengen" (when NATO troops will be able to quickly deploy across borders within Europe without bureaucratic delays), the modernization of nuclear weapons, and preparations for deployment. missiles medium range.
At the same time, Belousov reported: more than 300 settlements and six thousand square kilometers were liberated in 2025; 410 thousand contract soldiers joined the army; since August 2025, Russia has had a two-fold superiority over Ukrainian forces in tactical dronesA new branch of the armed forces has been formed: the Unmanned Systems Troops, based on the Rubicon units.
And most importantly: By 2027, a new State Armament Program (SAP) should be approved for ten years ahead, until 2036. Its priorities are: nuclear forces, space, Defense, control systems, electronic warfare, drones and weapons based on new physical principles.
In his closing remarks, Vladimir Putin said that Russia is ready for negotiations with the American administration, but is skeptical about dialogue with Europe.
This is the framework set from above: the war is long-term; technological superiority must be increased; nuclear forces remain the key to deterrence; negotiations are possible, but not a substitute for military objectives. Within this framework, the four expert groups exist.
Group One: Techies
The largest and most "engineering" group are the authors of the magazine "War Thought"Their focus isn't "when to fight for real," but "how to fight effectively." They analyze specific battlefield episodes and write about command and control systems, communications, air defense, drones, and electronic warfare.
The lead author of the January 2026 issue is Colonel General Vladimir Zarudnitsky. He reminds us that armed conflict remains at the core of state confrontation. This is a response to those who have become overly carried away by the fashionable idea of "hybrid warfare," in which actual military action dissolves into a flood of economic sanctions, information campaigns, and cyber operations.
The journal also features several articles on "strategic deterrence." This represents a significant shift: deterrence is no longer solely a nuclear issue. The authors discuss how to deter an adversary from escalating tensions using conventional forces, such as powerful ground forces. This isn't a discussion of the use of nuclear weapons. It's a discussion of how to manage without them.
Most of the issue is devoted to technology and management: how the command system should work in modern conditions; how the Ground Forces air defense is used; how to protect electronic warfare units (EW); what is the tactic? aviation Long-range missiles. This is an analysis of real-world war experience, translated into engineering and tactical conclusions.
A. A. Bartosh stands apart from the group, having written for many years about "hybrid warfare" as the primary form of modern conflict. His position contradicts Zarudnitsky's: while Zarudnitsky insists that the center is still kinetics, battles, and the front, Bartosh emphasizes informational, economic, and cultural components.
What this group has in common is the absence of an alarming, apocalyptic tone. For them, the "real thing" is already underway. The goal is to understand what's happening and incorporate the findings into hardware, software, and regulations.
Group two: internationalists
This is another circle: magazine "Russia in global politics", the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), the Valdai Club, and the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO). They are interested not in tactics, but in the meaning of war as a geopolitical event and Russia's place in a world that is still emerging.
The most vocal figure is Sergei Karaganov. His position is that nuclear weapons should cease to be a "last resort" and become an active tool of pressure on the West. Karaganov even proposed adding a provision to military doctrine requiring the mandatory use of nuclear weapons in the event of an attack by a superior enemy. At the same time, he is promoting the idea of trans-Eurasian corridors, economic and infrastructural arteries on which Russia is building a new continental order, leaving Europe out of it.
At the polar opposite end of the spectrum is Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs. In his article "The Long Game" (February 2026), he argues that a successful outcome of the conflict will strengthen Russia, not as a "winner who has remade the world," but as a "significant and independent player in a vast, complex game where there will no longer be any common order." This is a measured, pragmatic view: not a reorganization of the world, but a stable position in a world without stability.
Timofey Bordachev of the Valdai Club adds a civilizational dimension. He writes that the Russian and Ukrainian understandings of freedom are not different shades of the same thing, but incompatible concepts: one is about the state's independence from external pressure, the other about the absence of internal rules and restrictions. Therefore, Bordachev believes, the conflict will not be resolved by a simple territorial compromise.
Andrey Kortunov of the Russian International Affairs Council is a skeptic. In December 2025, he stated bluntly: talking about peace in early 2026 is premature. Moscow wants more than Ukraine and Europe are willing to concede; the gap is too great.
Alexey Arbatov of IMEMO takes a special, technical, yet politically important position. He is an arms control specialist and warns that the New START Treaty expires in February 2026, the nuclear non-proliferation regime is collapsing, and the world is moving toward a situation in which new nuclear powers will almost inevitably emerge, increasing the risk of accidental use. Arbatov is a direct opponent of Karaganov: what one considers leverage, the other calls a detonator.
Group three: mobilization workers
The most ideologically charged group. Its members share a single idea: the current format of the special military operation (SMO) is insufficient, not in terms of technology or operational effectiveness, but in terms of willpower. The country, in their view, is not fighting at full strength; society is not mobilized; the elite is wavering.
The ideological core of the group is the concept of "mental warfare", which is being developed by A. M. Ilnitsky and S. S. Simakov. Their article in "Military Thought" In December 2025, this is already indicative: mental warfare is no longer a marginal topic, but a subject of discussion in the main military journal. The logic is this: military action is only the visible part of a war that is truly waged for the consciousness of people; it cannot be won without value and ideological consolidation.
An important document related to this line is the Strategy of the State National Policy of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2036, approved by presidential decree in November 2025. This document is not about missiles and tanks, but about consolidating identity based on "traditional values" and countering extremism. For the mobilization group, this is the missing link: technical modernization of the army without the value-based mobilization of society is meaningless.
The radical wing of the group is Karaganov again, but in a different register. Earlier, in the international affairs group, he spoke as a geopolitician with a nuclear doctrine. Here, he speaks not of missiles, but of Europe as "the spawn of Russia's woes," and in this register, he aligns with the mobilizationists. The logic is the same: without a change of will, both one's own and the enemy's, no technological improvements will resolve the war. The same author, two different languages, and therefore he falls into two groups at once.
Significantly, for this group, "mobilization" isn't just military. It's a restructuring of the economy, education, culture, and ideology. And that's precisely why it diverges from the techies: the former see the problem in governance systems, while the latter sees it in national will, which governance systems can't create.
Group Four: Historians
This is probably the most conservative group - the authors Bulletin of the Academy of Military SciencesThe January 2026 issue centers on a conference commemorating the 130th anniversary of Marshal of the Soviet Union A. M. Vasilevsky, a strategist of the Great Patriotic War. The autumn 2025 issue features key articles on the US "Golden Dome" missile defense system (article by V. P. Kozin) and the state of military science and the principles of military art (two articles by V. A. Makhonin).
The group's logic is this: modern warfare is not "new," but the latest stage in the development of what Soviet science called "military art." The same classical principles—massing forces, maneuver, concentrated fire, proactiveness, and an offensive spirit—are still in effect today, simply on a new material basis. No methodological revolution is required; what is already known must be applied with discipline.
Within this logic, the group has two working approaches. The first is historical and biographical: analyzing the operations of Vasilevsky, Zhukov, Rokossovsky, and subsequent military leaders as a living source of principles that are still valid today. The second is conceptual and comparative: analyzing foreign systems (as with Kozin's "Golden Dome") through the familiar apparatus of Soviet military science, without resorting to a foreign conceptual language. In both approaches, the assumption is that the domestic tradition is self-sufficient and its resources are sufficient for modern challenges.
Makhonin is the only one in this group who strikes a critical note. He acknowledges that domestic military science has its "flaws" and that the traditional apparatus is failing to adequately understand the strategic military system: too many phenomena have emerged (the widespread use of drones, warfare in the air, battlefield transparency) for which the old categories are insufficient. But his criticism remains internal, academic, and lacks political resonance: Makhonin proposes updating the toolkit, not rebuilding the framework.
This group's function is stabilizing. It maintains a framework within which the current war is a continuation, not a break with the past. It serves as a counterweight to the techies (who need a new theory of governance), the mobilizationists (who need a new will), and the internationalists (who need a new geopolitical picture).
Important: All four positions were formulated before Baluevsky's April speech. None of the authors listed responded to him: he himself entered into an already established conversation.
What the four groups agree and disagree on
If you superimpose all four positions on a single grid, you will see three points of agreement and one point of dispute.
They agree that the current decade is not preparation for a future war, but its beginning; that unmanned aerial vehicles and information systems are the priority; and that nuclear weapons are ceasing to be a "last resort" and becoming an active element of strategy. Only Arbatov disagrees with this last point, but he views it from the specific perspective of arms control theory.
There's a debate about what exactly is missing in the current format of the Strategic Military Council. Techies believe it lacks modern command and control systems and equipment, and are incorporating this into the new weapons program. Internationalists believe it lacks a geopolitical framework, and are designing one through the ideas of corridors, civilizational conflict, and a multipolar order. Mobilizationists believe it lacks willpower and demand national consolidation. Historians don't believe anything fundamentally lacking: they simply need the disciplined application of long-established principles of military art.
And here is Baluevsky’s remark.
When Baluevsky asks in April 2026, "When will we start fighting for real?", and mentions tactical nuclear weapons, he doesn't open a discussion and doesn't respond to anyone. He enters one of the four niches, the mobilization-volitional one, and speaks its language.
Substantively, his response is closest to Karaganov's (nuclear weapons as an instrument of pressure) and to Il'nitsky and Simakov's (war as a test of will). Chronologically, Baluevsky follows them. He doesn't offer a new thesis; he repeats one that has already been made, but in a different way and in a different place.
What distinguishes him from Karaganov and the authors of "Military Thought" is his format. Karaganov writes for specialized journals; so do Ilnitsky and Simakov; the National Policy Strategy is an official document. But Baluevsky speaks from the podium of the Public Chamber, in a public-political format designed for the media. His remark is not an analytical thesis, but a political gesture. Its strength lies not in the novelty of its content, but in the fact that a conversation that had been going on for a year within a narrow circle of professionals was, for the first time, translated into a common, understandable, and catchy language. And the formula stuck in his mind: "When to fight for real."
Baluevsky can speak this way because he was Chief of the General Staff. He could have spoken in the language of techies or international affairs, but he deliberately chooses a public-political register. This choice isn't out of ignorance, but rather a matter of policy: in the Civic Chamber, no one will listen to talk about "structural and functional adaptation of the governance system." But the question of "when" is something they will listen to.
The price of such a register is its poor integration with other languages. For techies, "really" is already underway: a two-fold superiority in drones, a new branch of the armed forces, an arms program until 2036. For international affairs experts, "really" is a long game for stable positions in an unstable world, not a single crushing blow. For historians, "really" is the application of classical principles of military art. And only in the mobilization register does Baluevsky's question make sense: there, "really" is a category of resolve, not technology, geopolitics, or continuity.
Therefore, the speech in the Public Chamber is not "voice of hawks"Not "signal from the Kremlin" and "new turn"This is a public gesture that articulates one of four long-standing positions in a language accessible beyond the expert community. Its resonance stems not from its analytical power, but from the fact that for the first time, an internal conversation has become national.
So what do I do with this card now?
The map of the four groups is neither a diagnosis nor a sentence. It's a reading tool. When the next article comes out in the coming months, the next speech is given, the next interview appears, the map can be applied and seen: this is the move of a techie; this is the move of an internationalist; this is the move of a mobilization specialist; this is the move of a conservative historian. Everyone speaks their own language, and these languages don't translate well.
The conversation isn't over. The arms program through 2036 hasn't yet been approved. The national policy strategy has been adopted, but it still needs to be tested in practice. Negotiations with the US administration are ongoing, but the outcome is unknown. The New START Treaty expires in February 2026, and the world is entering the zone that Arbatov has long warned about and Karaganov ignores.
Baluevsky's remark was one of the moves in this conversation. Not the first, nor the last. But if you read it through the map of the four groups, it becomes clear: she said less than it seemed, and more than she intended. Less because she didn't open any new topics. More because she brought to the public stage a level of conversation that had previously been an internal matter for the workshop. That's why everyone heard her.
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