With Russia losing ground in eastern and southern Ukraine, even as it says it is annexing it, Kremlin watchers face a pressing question: Will President Vladimir Putin pull the nuclear trigger?
For now, analysts cautiously suggest that the risk of Putin using the world’s largest nuclear arsenal appears low. The CIA says it has seen no signs of an imminent Russian nuclear attack.
“We see no practical evidence today in the US intelligence community that is approaching actual use, that there is an imminent threat to use tactical nuclear weapons,” said CIA Director William Burns Monday on CBS News.
“What we have to do is take it very seriously, watch for signs of real preparations.”
Nuclear strike could make Putin a global pariah
Kremlin watchers are scratching their heads at Putin’s threats to use “every means at our disposal,” in part because they don’t see how nuclear force could do much to reverse Russia’s military losses in Ukraine.
Ukrainian troops are not using large concentrations of tanks to pound the ground, and the fighting is sometimes for places as small as villages. So what could Russian nuclear forces aim for, with winning effects?
The backlash could also make Putin a global pariah.
The Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile is launched from Plesetsk, northwestern Russia, in this photo released in April. Putin has warned that he would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons to prevent Ukraine from trying to regain control of its occupied regions that Moscow is trying to absorb. (Press Service of the Roscosmos Space Agency/The Associated Press)
“Breaking the nuclear taboo would, at the very least, impose complete diplomatic and economic isolation on Russia,” said Sidharth Kaushal, a defense and security researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
Long-range nuclear weapons that Russia could use in a direct conflict with the United States are ready for battle. But its stockpiles of shorter-range warheads — the so-called tactical weapons that Putin might be tempted to use in Ukraine — are not, analysts say.
“All these weapons are stockpiled,” said Pavel Podvig, another senior researcher specializing in nuclear weapons at the UN disarmament think tank in Geneva.
“You have to take them out of the bunker, load them into trucks,” and then marry them with missiles or other delivery systems, he said.
Other likely escalations before nuclear
Analysts also expect other escalations first, such as an intensification of Russian attacks on Ukraine with non-nuclear weapons.
“I don’t think there will be a bolt out of the blue,” said Nikolai Sokov, who was involved in arms control negotiations when he worked for Russia’s foreign ministry and is now at the Center for Disarmament and Non-Disarmament. Proliferation of Vienna.
US President Joe Biden speaks about Russia from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on Friday. The US would have several options if Russia launches a nuclear attack. (Susan Walsh/The Associated Press)
Kyiv city council says it is providing evacuation centers with potassium iodine tablets to prepare for a possible nuclear attack.
Potassium iodine pills can help block the absorption of harmful radiation by the thyroid gland if taken just before or immediately after exposure to nuclear radiation.
In an interview with CBC News, Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, said the threat of nuclear weapons is irrelevant to citizens fighting for their survival independently.
“If you’re fighting a war of survival, it’s not that essential or that different if you’re going to be killed with conventional weapons, by Kalashnikovs, if you’re going to be tortured in torture chambers in places like Bucha or Izium, or if you’re going to be killed by a nuclear attack
As the dominant world superpower, the United States will effectively decide the response to any Russian nuclear attack.
US President Joe Biden’s option would include a non-military response, responding with another nuclear attack that would risk escalation, and responding with a conventional attack that could involve Washington in direct war with Moscow.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington had warned Moscow of specific “catastrophic consequences” if it used nuclear weapons.
Retired general says US would sink Russia’s fleet
Retired general and former CIA chief David Petraeus said that if Moscow used nuclear weapons, the United States and its NATO allies would destroy Russian troops and equipment in Ukraine and sink its entire sea fleet black
The Kremlin said on Tuesday it did not want to engage in “nuclear rhetoric” spread by the West after a media report that Russia was preparing to demonstrate its willingness to use nuclear weapons with a test on the Ukrainian border.
The Times newspaper reported on Monday that the NATO military alliance had warned its members that Putin must demonstrate his willingness to use nuclear weapons and that Russia had moved a train thought to be linked to a of the Ministry of Defense responsible for nuclear munitions. .
Asked about the Times report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Western media, Western politicians and heads of state are doing a lot of exercises in nuclear rhetoric right now. No we want to be a part of that.”
Putin passes to end annexation claim
Meanwhile, Putin could finalize his plan to annex four regions of Ukraine today, even though his forces are being rebuffed by Ukraine.
The upper house of the Russian parliament voted on Tuesday in favor of the incorporation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which together represent about 18% of Ukraine. The Kremlin said Putin’s signature, the final stage of the process, was likely later.
Russia does not fully control any of the four regions it says it is annexing, and the Kremlin has said it has yet to determine the final borders of the annexed territory.
Russian forces in eastern Donetsk and the southern Kherson regions have been forced to withdraw in recent days and appear to be struggling to stop a well-equipped Ukrainian army. Moscow hopes the “partial mobilization” it announced two weeks ago can help turn the tide.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was quoted by the RIA news agency on Tuesday as saying that Moscow had so far called up more than 200,000 reservists out of a planned 300,000 men.
However, many Russian men have fled the country rather than fight in Ukraine, and Russian lawyers say they are working at full speed to offer advice to men who want to avoid being elected. Some Russians are making journeys of thousands of kilometers by car, train and plane to escape.
Advance of the South
In their biggest advance in the south since the seven-month war began, Ukrainian forces retook several villages on Monday in an advance along the strategic Dnipro River, Ukrainian officials and a Russian-installed leader in the area
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that his country’s military had made significant and rapid advances against Russian forces and liberated dozens of towns in the south and east from occupation.
“The Ukrainian army is advancing quite quickly and powerfully in the south of the country, in the context of the current defense operation,” Zelenskyy said in his late-night video.
“This week alone, since the Russian pseudo-referendum, dozens of population centers have been liberated. They are in Kherson, Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions all together.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Zelenskyi formally declared any talks with Putin “impossible”, while leaving the door open to talks with Russia if it had a new leader.
The Kremlin said what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine would not end if Kyiv scrapped the talks, adding that “two sides are needed to negotiate.”
The United States announced it will provide an additional $625 million in military aid to Ukraine, a package that includes additional advanced rocket systems credited with helping the country’s military gain momentum in the war.
Biden detailed the latest package, which includes high-mobility artillery rocket systems, or HIMARS, ammunition for artillery systems and armored vehicles, in a Tuesday morning call with Zelenskyy.