NUCLEAR WARIs Putin Preparing for Nuclear War?
On 6 May, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he had authorized a military exercise involving the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in southern Russia. This is the first time such an announcement has been made since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Putin needs to understand that even use of tactical nuclear weapons by him may risk total war and the end of Russia as a functioning state.
On 6 May, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he had authorized a military exercise involving the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in southern Russia. He claimed there was ‘nothing unusual’ in such a planned training exercise.
But to my knowledge this is the first time such an announcement has been made since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This exercise also involved the transfer of some tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. This was also the first move of such warheads outside Russia since the fall of the USSR.
Moscow said it was deploying tactical nuclear weapons after what it said were military threats from France, Britain and the United States. The Pentagon has since said it has seen no change to the alert status of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces—as distinct from tactical nuclear forces—despite ‘irresponsible rhetoric’ from Moscow detailing plans for exercises involving the deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons.
Moscow’s response is that France is threatening to deploy troops to Ukraine and that Britain, in supplying strike weapons to Kyiv, is encouraging it to exploit their ability to reach into Russia.
And Washington is providing Ukraine with additional Patriot batteries, which are formidable air-defense weapons, as well as longer-range strike weapons capable of striking farther into Russia.
The frequent warnings of nuclear conflict by Putin and other senior officials in Moscow are prompting concern in Washington.
It is, of course, worrying that Putin is increasingly stepping up his threats to use nuclear weapons. And he is now doing so with increasing frequency. Since this tactical nuclear weapon exercise is concentrated in the south of Russia, it is plainly directed at Ukraine.
It is coinciding with lack of military progress in the war, which is looking like a long, drawn-out slog. Last week, Putin announced the sacking of his long-serving minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu, and replaced him with an equally long-serving economic bureaucrat who will apparently focus on further integrating 24/7 military manufacturing into the economy. So, power continues to be increasingly in the hands of Putin, the longest-serving head of Russia since Stalin.
