Putin has been preparing for this war for a long time. I first began writing about Putin and Nikolai Patrushev’s [head of the Russian security council] doctrine in 2009. It was based on the fact that these two, these scoundrels, thought that they had come up with a way to beat the West using blackmail – audacious, cynical blackmail – by threatening the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This was despite being inferior to the West in every way: economically, in terms or civility or conventional warfare.
The scenario they envisaged for war, not only with Ukraine but with the whole of the West, with Nato, was spoken about and analysed repeatedly at different levels. But the person who did so most vividly was Putin when he found himself at the pinnacle of his euphoristic, triumphant state at the press conference following his meeting with Macron on 5 February.
He said: ‘Yes, on a conventional level we are inferior to Nato but we surpass you on a nuclear level. We have some incredible nuclear weapons that you don’t etc, and we can defeat you.’ Putin doesn’t have any ‘wonder weapons’, although it is possible that he believed his own words and was being lied to by the crooks who forced him to spend billions of dollars on developing new, totally unnecessary and unneeded tactical nuclear weapons – all of these Poseidons, the Sarmatovs that he’s threatening the world with.
Threatening Putin with his life works. He’s not some martyr willing to die for his great idea
For a long time now, the world has found itself in a state of mutually assured destruction. For this reason none of the nuclear powers have contemplated nuclear war, understanding that it would bring about not just an acceptable level of damage but destruction for all participants.
Putin and Patrushev decided to use tactical nuclear weapons as their threat, and set themselves on a collision course with Nato. When that conventional superiority of Nato’s as they understood it to be manifested itself they would threaten to use tactical nuclear weapons and were convinced that the West would get scared, capitulate and step back.
That’s what he was planning when he came up against the collapse of his blitzkrieg in the first days of the war in Ukraine. You will probably remember, there was nuclear sabre-rattling and threats to bomb the armed convoys heading towards Ukraine through Nato countries such as Poland, Romania and so forth almost every day.
He was met with very strong resistance. The first world leader to accurately address this question of nuclear weapons and Putin’s fate should he choose to use them was Ukraine’s number one friend, Boris Johnson. He lead the free world in its support for Ukraine in its fight.
When Putin began to talk about the possibility of nuclear strikes on Ukraine, Johnson reminded Russia that the UK is also a nuclear power and would not let Putin’s use of nuclear weapons go unpunished. He did this without waiting for the US or Nato as a whole to react.
Later on, US Defence Minister Lloyd Austin and Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley similarly warned Gerasimov at a military level that, firstly, Putin and Patrushev’s calculation that the West would get spooked and capitulate was incorrect. Should Russia deploy nuclear weapons, the West will answer in kind – an answer that would be destructive to Russia and affect Putin himself. In other words, translating it into language Putin understands, St Petersburg slang, should Putin use nuclear weapons, he would be killed.
And, you know, he understands this language. Over the past two to three weeks, there have been countless official announcements from the Russian leadership, from Putin and Shoigu. In his letter to the UN conference on nuclear disarmament, Putin emphasised that they were working off the assumption that nuclear war is impossible, no one can win.
That is to say, he repeated all the truisms that all responsible governments subscribed to for decades after the Cuban crisis. Recently Shoigu announced that ‘our nuclear weapons exist solely to deter possible attacks from other nuclear powers’.
In other words, threatening Putin with his life works. He’s not some martyr willing to die for his great idea. When he said: ‘they’ll all snuff it and we’ll go to paradise’, he has no intention of going to paradise. He believes these threats.
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