America’s enemies are always looking for new ways to hurt us. And this changes everything.
Because a secret Russian super weapon could change warfare forever.
Rising Concerns Over Weather as a Tool in Hybrid Warfare
Analysts tracking Russia’s escalating hybrid operations across Europe—ranging from sabotage and espionage to drone incursions—are now warning that Moscow may be exploring weather manipulation as an additional asymmetric weapon, particularly against agricultural powerhouses like Ukraine.
Ukraine Sounds the Alarm on Geo-Engineering Threats
Even if a ceasefire ends conventional fighting, Ukrainian officials fear Russia could deploy subtle climate-intervention techniques to undermine the country’s critical grain production, which remains vital to global food security.
“Russia’s potential use of solar geo-engineering as a hybrid warfare tool is no longer science fiction but a real risk,” said Andrii Sava, an organizer of the Ukraine Reconstruction Summit and an agribusiness expert. “A regime that has repeatedly ignored all norms could easily attempt to exploit climate technologies for destabilization. The world must recognize this threat and establish oversight mechanisms before such technologies become a new instrument of chaos.”
“The environment is not collateral damage. It is a new frontline of hybrid warfare — and defending it is quite literally defending life itself,” said Ruslan Spirin, a Ukrainian diplomat based in Kyiv.
Expert Reports Highlight Russia’s Growing Interest in “Weather Warfare”
A major study this year from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the UK’s oldest defense think tank, cautions that Russia and China are among the leaders investing in technologies that could deliberately induce droughts, floods, or other extremes under the guise of legitimate climate research.
The institute reports that Moscow could seek to induce climate extremes, such as drought or flooding, by deploying solar geo-engineering technologies against an adversary, disrupting agricultural production and the operation of critical infrastructure.
Russia has a documented history of environmental attacks, including the 2023 destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, which caused up to $11 billion in damage and threatens to turn once-fertile farmland into semi-desert. The dam’s loss has already slashed grain and oilseed output in affected regions from roughly 4 million tons annually.
Russia has also invested in cloud-seeding aircraft (unveiled in 2013 and reportedly used in occupied Crimea in 2020) and could theoretically conduct operations from its own territory or occupied zones that affect Ukrainian harvests, logistics, or mine-clearance efforts without violating a formal ceasefire.
Broader Context: A Blurred Line Between Peaceful and Military Applications
Weather-modification techniques are not new—cloud-seeding dates to the 1940s, and the U.S. employed it during the Vietnam War under Operation Popeye. The 1978 Environmental Modification Convention bans hostile use of such technologies, with the United States, Russia, and China among the signatories. However, many nations continue large-scale programs for ostensibly civilian purposes, and enforcement mechanisms remain limited.
China, for example, has conducted extensive cloud-seeding operations over Tibet and Xinjiang, raising concerns in India and among human-rights advocates about downstream ecological and social impacts.
“China’s efforts at cloud seeding in Tibet have comprehensive national security implications not only for India, but several countries in the lower riparian geographies of rivers emerging out of the Hindu Kush, Himalayas and Karakoram,” said Chaitanya Giri, a research fellow with India’s Observer Research Foundation.
As hybrid threats evolve, experts stress the urgent need for updated international oversight to prevent climate and geo-engineering tools from becoming the next frontier in great-power competition.
