Do you think Putin will use nuclear weapons?

[colddayinhell]

I'm getting very nervous about the ramping up of the war and Putin's calling up of 300,000 reservists. It feels like this is a major escalation. I know that any use of nuclear weapons would mean instant retaliation but it no longer feels like a MAD scenario as it almost feels now like he wants a scorched earth and has nothing to lose and doesn't care that it would destroy everything.

[vera99]

@wichit there is no moral equivalence at all. There is a debate after the war to examine how this all happened but this is not the time. This is a longish tik tok but well worth 7 minutes of your time. This is the digital equivalent of dropping leaflets in the enemy’s trenches and beautifully puts why this is a war at least for the Ukrainians is of good vs evil.
www.tiktok.com/@..jjuulliee/video/7152604904077397290

[vera99]

Live link. Oleksii Reznikov has a message for the ppl of Russia

[strawberriesarenot]

@vera99

Live link. Oleksii Reznikov has a message for the ppl of Russia

But how can the people of Russia see that?

[vera99]

@strawberriesarenot

But how can the people of Russia see that?

Tik Tok is still available I think in Russia (it is Chinese-owned) - I think it's as much a beautiful morale-boosting summary for UKR as it is for Russians.

[strawberriesarenot]

Thank you,vera99

[PleaseGoDontGoAgain]

@Igotjelly

Putin is only not Hitler because so far he hasn’t been allowed to be. He’s made it clear that should he succeed in Ukraine he wouldn’t stop. The fight in Ukraine is about far more than Ukrainian territory. Like it or not this is existential for democracies and the right of countries to self-determination.

He got away with bombing the shit out of Syria. Every hospital the Russians hit was described as abhorrent, tragedy, war crime and other harsh words but nothing happened.

I wouldn't put it past them to have bombed the bloody bridge themselves so he could up the ante.

He knows nothing will be done

[Greenshake]

It’s not true to say that not hi will be done. A lot already has been.

[Greenshake]

*nothing

[TheRubyRedshoes]

I can't understand why an international response didn't match Putin's build up on Ukraine border.


On the Ukraine side should have been overwhelming military power from everyone who wants too ie everyone who is involved now?

Let's say, Ukraine pushes Russia out....we have a great two decades with soft Russia then a despot gets in charge and masses troops on Ukraine border would we again sit and watch that build up, passively watch the. War again?
Or would we get in on Ukraine borders and send the message?
Cross that line and start a massive war.

[Greenshake]

I think a lot of lessons are being learnt from this.

[Wichit]

I can't understand why an international response didn't match Putin's build up on Ukraine border.

Because the UK and NATO wanted Putin to step over the line. If you remember it was us that declared that the hostilities had tipped over into war after years of very similar activity that nobody outside the area paid much heed to.

We wanted him to do it so that we could distance ourselves from him and try to economically extricate ourselves from him. We couldn't do it while Trump was still around, but we needed to because Russia is much too well placed if it's both BRICS aligned and simultaneously embedded throughout European and USA financial, energy, property and other asset markets.

So we talked Zelenskiy a good game and got him to step towards us. God knows the guy himself personally had little to lose given the corruption/Nazi goings on he was involved with. And Putin, knowing his run with us was if not over then heading towards unfriendly status, and probably genuinely fucked off with Zelenskiy and all the other oligarchs he's been offing, went full Russian Front.

[PleaseGoDontGoAgain]

@Greenshake
Russia bombs Syria into the ground because terrorism.
Russia declares increased bombing of cities in Ukraine is because terrorism.

There's a pattern forming here.

Russia clearly did learn something from Syria and it wasn't that the punishment for war crimes is a deterrent.

[notimagain]

I can't understand why an international response didn't match Putin's build up on Ukraine border.
On the Ukraine side should have been overwhelming military power from everyone who wants too ie everyone who is involved now?

'Cos rules...the west still sometimes plays by them.

Ukraine isn't in NATO, it couldn't join the long lasting territorial dispute with Russia.

If you look at actually went on as the Russian build up intensified NATO assets did pile into NATO signatory states on the western side of Ukraine such as Poland.

[vera99]

Sky had a special Q&A programme with their expert, Professor Michael Clarke, which is an interesting watch.
He doesn't think Putin will use nukes, because he doesn't want to end up with a direct NATO response, which is reassuring, but he also thinks, with various ceasefires along the way, that the war could drag on for 30-40 years, continuing after Putin is replaced (he says he is finished and that western intelligence knows who it is who is seriously opposing him within the Kremlin ) by a more hard-line leader, which is the bad news.

Also at the end, there's talk about Ukraine running low on NATO weapons and that the supply has real limitations...not something you usually hear in the western narrative also that winter benefits Russia better than Ukraine.

He seems to know his stuff.
www.kcl.ac.uk/people/michael-clarke

[vileta]

@vera99 interesting but so t Russia run out of weapons before NATO being under sanctions? Also they mobilize civilians meaning they run out of professional army. The war can certainly drag on for many years. I wonder who is more hard lined than Putin in Russia? The opposition was certainly wiped out however I still believe their younger generation (15-20years) are quite liberal?

[vileta]

I heard Russian liberals being concerned that he could use low power nuclear bombs just to frighten Ukrainians. If he does what would NATO do? They won't nuke Russia as then it will quickly escalate, they won't nuke Russian army on Ukrainian territory, will they send their army to Ukraine? And then best case scenario they will push Russians out but then what? The war can go on and Ukraine will have contamination areas... it's all so tragic and unimaginable I really wish I could wake up from this nightmare. So many lives lost for no reason! Russia does not need these territories! Russia does not need Putin. I think at the end of this war Russia will cease to be what it is now, losing some of its Federations that want out like Yakutia. I don't know.

[vera99]

www.politico.eu/article/after-putin-12-people-ready-ruin-russia-next/

This seems like a good article on who could succeed him - Professor Clarke didn't mention a name but "The Superspy" — Nikolai Patrushev seems to be surfacing in multiple credible publications - whether Putin would go quietly I doubt but the inference is that as far as the Kremlin is involved it will be a continuation of the war in as far as they have the means to prosecute it.

WAPO is behind a paywall and seems to say the same thing.

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/nikolai-patrushev-russia-security-council-putin/?outputType=amp

The man who has Putin’s ear — and may want his job
Russian security chief Nikolai Patrushev is one of the Russian president’s few close advisers
By Catherine Belton
July 13, 2022 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

When Russian President Vladimir Putin held the final meeting of his Security Council before launching the invasion of Ukraine, one Kremlin hawk seemed to dominate the room.
Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful Security Council secretary and close Putin ally from their days together at the KGB in St. Petersburg, told the Russian president that the United States was behind tensions in eastern Ukraine and seeking to orchestrate Russia’s collapse. “Our task is to defend the territorial integrity of our country and defend its sovereignty,” Patrushev said in broadcast remarks.
Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Patrushev, whose position is equivalent to the U.S. national security adviser, was expressing a Cold War view that has driven Putin’s war. Ever since Putin ordered the Feb. 24 invasion, blindsiding much of the country’s elite, Patrushev has become a hard-line avatar for a militaristic Russia.
While Putin seemed to flounder in the first three months of the conflict — angry, on the defensive and almost disappearing from view — Patrushev stepped forward to justify the invasion and promote Russia’s war aims. In a series of interviews with Russian newspapers, he predicted Europe would collapse under the weight of a global food and refugee crisis, while Ukraine would disintegrate into several states. He called for a revival of “historic traditions” in Russia’s education system to create “genuine patriots.” He even ventured into economic policy, calling for a “structural perestroika” — a reference to Soviet-era reform — that in part would include a new sovereign system for determining the ruble’s exchange rate.
Patrushev’s sudden emergence after more than two decades as a behind-the-scenes power broker has underlined his role as a driving force in the Kremlin. For a while, it even prompted questions about whether he was seeking to position himself to take over from Putin, amid persistent speculation about the president’s health and Russia’s retreat from Kyiv.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told The Washington Post that the suggestion that Patrushev’s role had changed was an “invention.” Patrushev had always been active in line with his “broad sphere of authority,” Peskov said.
“Of course, the president is the president, and in conditions of the special military operation, he carries out the role of commander in chief,” Peskov said using the Kremlin’s term for the invasion.
The Security Council spokesman, Yevgeny Anoshin, also denied that Patrushev was laying claim to any greater role. Patrushev “is a patriot. He is a state actor who for many years has been devoted to the Russian Federation and to Putin,” he said.
[Russia seeks to militarize schoolchildren and censor textbooks amid war]
Over the past month, Putin has recovered some of his former swagger, refocusing the military campaign on capturing Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and digging in for a long war of attrition against Kyiv — and, economically, against the West. Just last week, Putin told lawmakers that Russia had not even “seriously started” its war against Ukraine and claimed that his military campaign was “the beginning of a cardinal breakdown of the American-led world order.”
But although Putin has returned to form in a series of speeches, questions remain over his health — and Patrushev continues to pick up a great deal of the slack. The Kremlin denies that Putin has any health issues.
Putin — who turns 70 this year and is a year younger than Patrushev — has not been photographed playing ice hockey, his favorite sport, since a New Year’s Eve game with Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president. In May, for the first time in 10 years, Putin missed playing at the annual gala match of Russia’s Night Hockey League.
[Russia’s ultimate political survivor faces a wartime reckoning]
He has made only one foreign trip since the start of the war — visiting Tajikistan and then going on to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, in June for a summit of the five states bordering the Caspian sea, where, once again, he conspicuously kept a great distance from his counterparts, seated around an enormous round table.
Patrushev, in contrast, has crisscrossed the former Soviet Union, most recently visiting Yerevan, Armenia, in June for a summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Russia-led answer to NATO. There, he lashed out at the United States for its “reckless expansion of NATO” and claimed that it was seeking to break up Eurasian integration and turn states in the region into “puppet, colonial countries, just like Ukraine.”
Patrushev also took the lead in defending Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave, threatening “serious” retaliation over the blocking of transit supplies via Lithuania due to sanctions imposed by the European Union. In July, at a security summit in Russia’s Far East, he ventured into energy security, long Putin’s preserve, calling for the reduction of “foreign participation in projects significant for the Russian energy sector,” as well as declaring that Russia would achieve its goal of “demilitarizing” Ukraine.
Patrushev’s ascendance underlines the influence of hard-line former KGB men, who have been battling liberal-leaning technocrats for Putin’s ear for more than two decades. When Putin launched the war, it seemed “Patrushev’s moment had come,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of the Russian political consultancy R.Politik. “His ideas form the foundations of decisions taken by Putin. He is one of the few figures Putin listens to.”
[Within the war between Russia and Ukraine, a war between Chechens]
Patrushev’s lengthy interviews — and his recent trips — demonstrate that he “is the one allowed to explain and clarify Putin’s thoughts,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Not everyone is allowed to do this. Not everyone knows this.”
Even when Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks, it is not clear whether he speaks for Putin. “Diplomats often try to guess. They don’t know what Putin wants, but Patrushev does,” Kolesnikov said.
Ever since Putin was anointed head of the FSB, the KGB successor agency, in 1998 and began his rapid ascent to the Russian presidency, Patrushev has served by his side. For Mark Galeotti, honorary professor at the University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies, Patrushev has long been the “devil on Putin’s shoulder whispering poison into his ear.”
According to a person once close to both men, Patrushev is a hard-drinking, hard-talking “silovik” — which translates as “man of force” and is used in Russia to describe current and former security officials in power — who forged his view of the world in the Cold War and has changed little since the fall of the Soviet Union, especially in his hostility to the United States. “He is super Soviet KGB,” the person said, speaking, like others, on the condition of anonymity because of personal security fears. “He understands everything as if the Soviet Union still existed, and he sees himself in these terms.”
Patrushev first served alongside Putin when they worked in the KGB’s counterintelligence division in what was then Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in the 1970s. Patrushev moved to Moscow two years ahead of Putin, serving in senior positions in the FSB’s Lubyanka headquarters in the 1990s. When Putin suddenly leapfrogged Patrushev to become FSB chief, Patrushev was jealous, the person once close to both men said. “Putin was a nobody. Putin was a lieutenant colonel, and [Patrushev] was already a general colonel.”
A former senior KGB officer who once worked with Putin agreed. “Patrushev was older and higher in the ranks. But Putin took over because he was closer to [then-President Boris] Yeltsin,” this person said.
Later, when Putin was chosen by Yeltsin to become prime minister, Patrushev replaced Putin as FSB chief. From that moment, Patrushev has sought both to make sure Putin stayed in power and to control him, the person once close to both men said. Questions have long swirled over whether Patrushev, as FSB chief, may have played a role in a spate of deadly apartment bombings in 1999, which killed more than 300 people and were officially blamed on Chechen terrorists. Putin’s swift response as prime minister — a new Russian war in Chechnya — elevated him from little-known bureaucrat to national hero, helping propel him to the presidency months later.
Interior Ministry investigations linking one attempted apartment bombing to the FSB were quickly shut down by Patrushev, who claimed that the attempt was no more than an “exercise” to test the vigilance of residents. The Kremlin has denied any FSB role in the bombings.
In the past two years, Patrushev has been one of a handful of close advisers with regular access to the president, Moscow insiders say, cementing his influence over Putin. “Patrushev has his own relations with Putin. He was his boss. He’s older. For Putin, such things are important,” said one well-connected Moscow businessman.
Patrushev was among the very few security advisers who probably knew of Putin’s decision before the invasion was launched, Stanovaya said. And nearly five months later, neither man may see — or want — a way out.
“Putin needs a continuation of the war,” said the Moscow businessman. “In condition of war, he can control society. If there is peace, people will start asking questions about why their lives are so bad.”

[Fladdermus]

@vileta

I heard Russian liberals being concerned that he could use low power nuclear bombs just to frighten Ukrainians. If he does what would NATO do? They won't nuke Russia as then it will quickly escalate, they won't nuke Russian army on Ukrainian territory, will they send their army to Ukraine? And then best case scenario they will push Russians out but then what? The war can go on and Ukraine will have contamination areas... it's all so tragic and unimaginable I really wish I could wake up from this nightmare. So many lives lost for no reason! Russia does not need these territories! Russia does not need Putin. I think at the end of this war Russia will cease to be what it is now, losing some of its Federations that want out like Yakutia. I don't know.

There's a another thread running asking if special forces are planning to take Putin out. Obviously they're not as that would be a declaration of war. However, A retired US security adviser said the other day that this was what he would expect to happen the moment Putin uses a nuke (assuming his own don't take him out first). That the plans will already be set and everything in place. Of course it could all be bullshit and just another way of saying 'Don't you fucking dare!'

[vera99]

@vileta

I heard Russian liberals being concerned that he could use low power nuclear bombs just to frighten Ukrainians. If he does what would NATO do? They won't nuke Russia as then it will quickly escalate, they won't nuke Russian army on Ukrainian territory, will they send their army to Ukraine? And then best case scenario they will push Russians out but then what? The war can go on and Ukraine will have contamination areas... it's all so tragic and unimaginable I really wish I could wake up from this nightmare. So many lives lost for no reason! Russia does not need these territories! Russia does not need Putin. I think at the end of this war Russia will cease to be what it is now, losing some of its Federations that want out like Yakutia. I don't know.

Professor Clarke who seems insanely well-informed thinks not and he quotes this article based on comments from General Petraeus who given his past as CIA director and retired 4-star general is as close to an official response as you are likely to get.

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/02/us-russia-putin-ukraine-war-david-petraeus

[vileta]

@vera99 thank you for the links! I'll read them!

[Theorema]

@Theorema

Late to this but YANBU.

i don’t think there will be a nuclear holocaust BUT I do think Putin will use a strategic nuke.

There has been repeated talk in Russia about how easy it would be to wipe the UK off the map.

I think there’s a good chance that Putin will use his strategic nuke on us. Yes we are part of NATO and any nuclear attack on us should mean an instant nuclear retaliation from the USA.

But realistically, that retaliation won’t happen because the USA will not sacrifice millions of American lives on our behalf. Logically, there’s just no way they’d condemn their entire population to certain death because the same thing had been done to us, a small country a long way from them.

Emanuel Macron has basically confirmed this - if Putin DOES use a strategic nuke, there will be no nuclear retaliation.

Macron’s actually said it out loud but it’s what anyone with any sense already knows. There is no way NATO countries will nuke Russia in response.

Even if Putin does wipe the UK off the map, there will be no nuclear retaliation because this would mean the end of life on earth.

[BigFatLiar]

I suspect Macron would act differently if the weapon was targeted at Paris.
If they target UK we'd still have time to retaliate before any nuke struck.

[notimagain]

@BigFatLiar

I suspect Macron would act differently if the weapon was targeted at Paris.
If they target UK we'd still have time to retaliate before any nuke struck.

Well if any weapon had been aimed at Paris then of course it's a different scenario.

In terms of the French ability to retaliate they have their own independent deterrent.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_de_dissuasion

[Greenshake]

@Theorema there WOULD be a nuclear retaliation as our own deterrent, Trident, would be deployed.

[shreddednips]

Emanuel Macron has basically confirmed this - if Putin DOES use a strategic nuke, there will be no nuclear retaliation.

Macron’s actually said it out loud but it’s what anyone with any sense already knows. There is no way NATO countries will nuke Russia in response.

Even if Putin does wipe the UK off the map, there will be no nuclear retaliation because this would mean the end of life on earth.

It's not up to Macron, or NATO, how the UK responds in the event of a nuclear attack on our soil. His comments were in relation to a potential nuclear attack on Ukraine AFAIK.

The UK has its own independent nuclear deterrent. Furthermore, all our warheads are on nuclear submarines and would remain operational even if the UK itself were turned into a nuclear wasteland. And, despite being significantly smaller than Russia or America's stockpile, Trident is substantial enough to be a formidable deterrent.

Launching a nuclear attack on the UK would be the stupidest thing Putin could possibly do short of attacking the US. Im concerned for Ukraine, but I don't believe for a second that there's any risk of an attack on the UK being Putin's opening nuclear gambit.