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Is Putin on the Brink of Using Nukes as Ukraine Regains Occupied Territory?

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Edited by: TJVNews.com

On Tuesday, the Associated Press asked the question that is on the mind of political experts and military strategists the world over:  Will President Vladimir Putin pull the nuclear trigger?

For Kremlin watchers trying to figure out whether the Russian leader’s nuclear threats are just bluffs, there is no more pressing — or tough — question.

The AP reported that presently, analysts have cautiously suggested that the risk of Putin using the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal still seems low. The CIA says it hasn’t seen signs of an imminent Russian nuclear attack.

Still, his vows to use “ all the means at our disposal ” to defend Russia as he wages war in Ukraine are being taken very seriously, the AP reported. And his claim Friday that the United States “created a precedent” by dropping atomic bombs in World War II further cranked up the nuclear stakes.

The White House has warned of “catastrophic consequences for Russia” if Putin goes nuclear.

But whether that will stay Putin’s hand is anyone’s guess. The AP also reported that nervous Kremlin watchers acknowledge they can’t be sure what he is thinking or even if he’s rational and well-informed.

Russia has made veiled nuclear threats since the war began, but this has escalated since Ukraine began to make significant inroads in reconquering land occupied by Russia, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.

The United States urged Russia not to use tactical nuclear arms last month. The JPost reported that in Putin’s mobilization speech on September 21st, he accused NATO of engaging in nuclear blackmail and warned that nuclear winds could blow both ways. He also warned that Russia would use all means at its disposal to protect newly annexed territories, which would be considered integral parts of Russian territory.

Putin’s threats to use “all the means at our disposal” to defend his country as it wages war in Ukraine have cranked up global fears that he might use his nuclear arsenal, with the world’s largest stockpile of warheads. (Sergei Savostyanov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

Since Putin’s warning, numerous Russian officials have waved the nuclear saber, according to the JPost report.  Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev specified that means to protect annexed territories included strategic nuclear weapons. Russia’s Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov penned an op-ed in The National Interest magazine on September 28th warning that the risk of nuclear conflict remained, the JPost reported. Putin’s Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov called on Moscow to use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield on Saturday.

The former KGB agent has demonstrated an appetite for risk and brinkmanship. It’s hard, even for Western intelligence agencies with spy satellites, to tell if Putin is bluffing or truly intent on breaking the nuclear taboo, the AP reported.

“We don’t see any practical evidence today in the U.S. intelligence community that he’s moving closer to actual use, that there’s an imminent threat of using tactical nuclear weapons,” CIA Director William Burns told CBS News.

“What we have to do is take it very seriously, watch for signs of actual preparations,” Burns said, as was reported by the AP.

Russia faces an “irreversible quagmire” in Ukraine which cannot be changed by nuclear threats, said ex-CIA chief and retired four-star army general David Petraeus on Sunday, as was reported by World Israel News.

Moscow “is losing” despite “significant” but “desperate” moves in Ukraine, Petraeus told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.

“President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine have mobilized vastly better than has Russia,” Petraeus said. “Ukraine has recruited, trained, equipped, organized and employed force incomparably better than Russia has.”

Despite President Vladimir Putin’s bellicose rhetoric, “No amount of annexation, no amount of even veiled nuclear threats can get him out of this situation,” Petraeus stressed, according to the WIN report.

“Just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a NATO – a collective – effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea,” he said.

“It cannot go unanswered. But it doesn’t expand — it’s not nuclear for nuclear. You don’t want to get into a nuclear escalation here,” Petraeus said. “But you have to show that this cannot be accepted in any way.”

Kremlin watchers are scratching their heads in part because they don’t see how nuclear force could greatly help reverse Russia’s military losses in Ukraine.

The AP reported that Ukrainian troops aren’t using large concentrations of tanks to wrest back ground, and combat is sometimes for places as small as villages. So what could Russian nuclear forces aim for with winning effect?

“Nuclear weapons are not a magic wand,” said Andrey Baklitskiy, a senior researcher at the U.N.’s Institute for Disarmament Research, who specializes in nuclear risk, as was reported by the AP. “They are not something that you just employ and they solve all your problems.”

Analysts hope the taboo that surrounds nuclear weapons is a disincentive. The horrific scale of human suffering in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the U.S. destroyed the Japanese cities with atomic bombs on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, was a powerful argument against a repeat use of such weapons. The attacks killed 210,000 people, the AP reported.

The Jerusalem Post also reported on Tuesday that the Pentagon currently has no information on the testing of Russia’s Poseidon nuclear torpedo-drone that would change the United States’ strategic posture, a senior US military official said in a Defense Department press briefing Monday evening.

The JPost reported that the statement came in response to reports in La Repubblica that NATO intelligence reports had warned allies that Russia’s Belgorod nuclear submarine was in the Artic Kara Sea to possibly test the “super torpedo.”

The Times said that that the weapon could also be tested in the Black Sea, where the Russia Navy has been launching ballistic missile attacks on Ukrainian positions to limited effect, as was reported by the JPost.

The AP reported that analysts guess that even Putin may find it difficult to become the first world leader since President Harry Truman to rain down nuclear fire.

Speaking to the AP,  Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at RAND Corp. and a former analyst of Russian military capabilities at the Defense Department said,  “It is still a taboo in Russia to cross that threshold.”

In this photo taken from undated footage distributed by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, an intercontinental ballistic missile lifts off from a silo somewhere in Russia. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

“One of the biggest decisions in the history of Earth,” Baklitskiy said. The AP reported that the backlash could turn Putin into a global pariah.

“Breaking the nuclear taboo would impose, at a minimum, complete diplomatic and economic isolation on Russia,” said Sidharth Kaushal, a researcher with the Royal United Services Institute in London that specializes in defense and security, as was reported by the AP.

“That’s very much what the Russians would be gambling on, that each escalation provides the other side with both a threat but (also) an off ramp to negotiate with Russia,” Kaushal said.

The AP reported that he added: ”There is a sort of grammar to nuclear signaling and brinksmanship, and a logic to it which is more than just, you know, one madman one day decides to go through with this sort of thing.”

Long-range nuclear weapons that Russia could use in a direct conflict with the United States are battle-ready. But its stocks of warheads for shorter ranges — so-called tactical weapons that Putin might be tempted to use in Ukraine — are not, analysts say.

Also speaking to the AP was Pavel Podvig, another senior researcher who specializes in nuclear weapons at the U.N.’s disarmament think tank in Geneva. Podvig said “All those weapons are in storage.”

“You need to take them out of the bunker, load them on trucks,” and then marry them with missiles or other delivery systems, he added.

The AP also reported that Russia hasn’t released a full inventory of its tactical nuclear weapons and their capabilities. Putin could order that a smaller one be surreptitiously readied and teed up for surprise use.

But overtly removing weapons from storage is also a tactic Putin could employ to raise pressure without using them. The AP reported that h he’d expect U.S. satellites to spot the activity and perhaps hope that baring his nuclear teeth might scare Western powers into dialing back support for Ukraine.

Analysts also expect other escalations first, including ramped-up Russian strikes in Ukraine using non-nuclear weapons.

“I don’t think there will be a bolt out of the blue,” said Nikolai Sokov, who took part in arms control negotiations when he worked for Russia’s Foreign Ministry and is now with the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, as was reported by the AP.

Analysts also struggle to identify battlefield targets that would be worth the huge price Putin would pay. If one nuclear strike didn’t stop Ukrainian advances, would he then attack again and again?

Podvig noted the war does not have “large concentrations of troops” to target, according to the AP report.

Striking cities, in hopes of shocking Ukraine into surrender, would be an awful alternative.

“The decision to kill tens and hundreds of thousands of people in cold blood, that’s a tough decision,” he said. “As it should be.”

Putin might be hoping that threats alone will slow Western weapon supplies to Ukraine and buy time to train 300,000 additional troops he’s mobilizing, triggering protests and an exodus of service-aged men, the AP reported.

But if Ukraine continues to roll back the invasion and Putin finds himself unable to hold what he has taken, analysts fear a growing risk of him deciding that his non-nuclear options are running out.

“Putin is really eliminating a lot of bridges behind him right now, with mobilization, with annexing new territories,” said RAND’s Massicot.

“It suggests that he is all-in on winning this on his terms,” she added, the AP reported. “I am very concerned about where that ultimately takes us — to include, at the end, a kind of a nuclear decision.”

Russia’s retreat from a key Ukrainian city over the weekend elicited outcry from an unlikely crowd – state-run media outlets that typically cast Moscow’s war in glowing terms, according to an AP report.

A series of embarrassing military losses in recent weeks has presented a challenge for prominent hosts of Russian news and political talk shows struggling to find ways to paint Ukraine’s gains in a way that is still favorable to the Kremlin.

This photo taken from video provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Feb. 19, 2022, shows a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile being launched from an air field during military drills. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

The AP reported that frustration with the battlefield setbacks has long been expressed in social media blogs run by nationalist pundits and pro-Kremlin analysts, and the volume grew after Ukraine’s counteroffensive last month around Kharkiv in the northeast. But it is now spilling out on state TV broadcasts and in the pages of government-backed newspapers.

The less conciliatory tone from state-run media comes as Putin faces widespread Russian discontent about his partial mobilization of reservists and as government officials struggle to explain plans to annex Ukrainian regions at the same time they are being retaken by Kyiv’s forces, the AP reported.

“The Russian defeat in Kharkiv (region) and Lyman, combined with the Kremlin’s failure to conduct partial mobilization effectively and fairly are fundamentally changing the Russian information space,” Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a report.

The AP reported on Sunday, after Ukraine recaptured Lyman, a city in the east that Russian troops had used as a key logistics and transport hub, Putin’s media allies dropped the niceties and more directly criticized his military, saying tougher measures were necessary for the sake of victory.

“What happened on Saturday, Lyman – it is a serious challenge for us,” Vladimir Solovyov, host of a prime-time talk show on state TV channel Russia 1 and one of the Kremlin’s biggest cheerleaders, said on air Sunday. “We need to pull it together, make unpopular, but necessary decisions and act.”

Ukrainian forces retook Lyman one day after Moscow celebrated its illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions, including Donetsk, roughly 40% of which — now including Lyman – is under Kyiv’s control, the AP reported.

The move paves the way for Ukrainian troops to potentially push even further into land that Moscow illegally claims as its own. Ukrainian forces scored more gains in their counteroffensive across at least two fronts Monday, advancing in the very areas Russia moved to absorb.

The AP also reported that the leader of Chechnya, a Russian region in the North Caucasus, blamed the retreat in Lyman on one general. In an online post, Ramzan Kadyrov, an outspoken supporter of the Kremlin, said the general’s incompetence was being “covered up for by higher-up leaders in the General Staff,” and called for “more drastic measures” to be taken.”

(Sources: AP, The Jerusalem Post, World Israel News) – Additional reporting by: Fern Sidman

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