Russian Nuclear Weapons: A Threat to the Global Security and the Integrity of the Space and Space-Based Intelligence, in the Early 1980’s

Washington. For all his threats to fire tactical nuclear arms at Ukrainian targets, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is now discovering what the United States itself concluded years ago, American officials suspect: Small nuclear weapons are hard to use, harder to control and a far better weapon of terror and intimidation than a weapon of war.

“We’re going to use all weapon systems available to us in case of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to protect Russia and our people,” he said. This is not a bluff.

Nuclear weapons are basically Armageddon in scale, according to De Bretton-Gordon. The Federation of Nuclear Scientists says that Russia, the United States, Britain and France have close to 6,000 nuclear weapons each, which is enough to change the planet. This is called Mutually Assured Destruction, with the rather ironic acronym MAD.

These warheads are used for the intercontinental missiles that can travel thousands of miles and are meant for key sites and cities in the US, UK, France and Russia.

Tactical nuclear weapons have a yield of up to 100 kilotons of detonation power, compared to about 1,000 kiloton for strategic nukes.

That said, tactical nuclear weapons could still create huge amounts of damage, and if fired at a nuclear power station – for example Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine – could create a chain reaction and contamination on a scale with a nuclear strike.

De Bretton-Gordon: This is difficult to tell for certain, but my assumption is that Russia’s strategic weapons and ICBMs are probably in good condition and always ready. It is only Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons which now give it parity with the US and NATO militarily, so I expect them to be well looked after.

The tactical weapons may not be the same as this. The vehicles on which the missiles and warheads are mounted have a poor condition, which I believe is because of the good authority that they have. This is a valid assumption, because the state of the rest of the Russian Army equipment inUkraine is very poor.

More likely, says Fink, is that Russia would decide to use a single nuclear weapon to try and freeze the conflict. That weapon could be used as a demonstration, over the Black Sea or even at a test site inside of Russia. Or it could be against any one of a number of fixed targets inside Ukraine, such as those the Russian military has hit with cruise missiles and drones in recent days.

It is likely that these weapons rely on high-tech components which can’t be found in Russia due to international sanctions and the heavy use of precision guide missiles by Russia.

At the heart of this move is attacking civilians rather than opposition forces. The attacks on hospitals, schools, and hazardous infrastructure are what manifest it. They are capable of becoming improvised chemical or nuclear weapons if they are attacked.

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The situation is complicated by the fact that there is no prospect of a diplomatic process to end the war. Ukraine is in no mood to talk after suffering an unprovoked invasion that has caused human carnage, especially as it now appears to have Russian troops on the run. Putin cannot afford any outcome to the war that looks like anything other than total victory even though his control over the Russian media might allow him to spin a loss into a win.

Meteorological conditions at the moment indicate that all this contamination would also head west across Europe. This could be seen as an attack on NATO and trigger Article 5 – where an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all allies – which would allow NATO to strike directly back at Russia.

De Bretton-Gordon: The use of strategic nuclear weapons is extremely unlikely in my opinion. This is a war nobody can win, and at the moment it does not seem likely that this regional conflict in Europe would lead to a global nuclear war which could destroy the planet for many generations.

I am sure the checks and balances are in place in the Kremlin, as they are at the White House and 10 Downing Street to make sure we are not plunged into global nuclear conflict on a whim.

US officials have said that they haven’t found a sign of Russia preparing to move any of its tactical nuclear weaponry, which can be small enough to target soldier formations or big enough to destroy a city.

I believe the Russians used unconventional warfare tactics in Syria. (Russian forces entered Syria’s long civil war in 2015, bolstering ally President Bashar al-Assad’s regime). I think Assad would not be in power if he did not use chemical weapons.

The rebels were stopped from taking over Damascus by the nerve agent attack. The four-year conventional siege of Aleppo was ended by multiple chlorine attacks.

If Putin were to carry on with his campaign against civilians, it would be a way of breaking Ukrainian spirits and possibly forcing a new wave of refugees into Western Europe that could inflame tensions between NATO allies.

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The two nations had thousands of tactical nuclear weapons that could be smaller in size and could be delivered by planes or short range missiles. NATO powers prepared to use such weapons, for example, if they were faced with an overwhelming conventional Soviet attack on Western Europe.

The likelihood of tactical use will be very high if some of the districts are attacked, because of the attempted annexation. One thinks that local commanders would defer to Putin first before pressing their own red button.

This possibility that Putin could be heralding a bloody new twist in a war that has gone through multiple strategic phases since the invasion in February was weighing heavy on the minds of political and military leaders in Washington Monday. They reacted with revulsion, because Putin was again attacking civilians that evoked the traumas of Europe’s 20th century.

Even in an attack on a power station one assumes Putin would be involved, as the West would likely construe it as an improvised nuclear weapon and act accordingly.

The Russian President used his speech on Friday to amplify his argument that Russia is at war with the West.

On Russia’s flagship Sunday political show, “News of the Week,” on Channel 1, the fall of Lyman wasn’t even mentioned until after more than an hour of laudatory coverage of Russia’s growth from 85 to 89 regions in an annexation most of the world views as illegal.

A day earlier, two powerful Putin supporters railed against the Kremlin and called for using harsher fighting methods because Lyman had fallen just as Moscow was declaring that the illegally annexed region it lies in would be Russian forever.

But the soldiers interviewed on the Sunday broadcast said they had been forced to retreat because they were fighting not only with Ukrainians, but with NATO soldiers.

These are not toys anymore. The deputy commander of one Russian battalion told the show’s war correspondent that they are a part of a systematic offensive by the army and NATO forces. The soldier said his unit had been listening to the radios of other soldiers and not Ukrainians.

This nuclear propaganda is meant to “scare the West and appease the audience—and take their mind away from failures,” says Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst at the US think tank Institute for the Study of War and a frequent watcher of Russian TV.

The father of a prominent nationalist commentator who was killed by a car bomb in August agreed with a suggestion that Russia is fighting a broader campaign.

The Western countries have been accused of damaging theNord Stream gas line by both the European and Russian leaders, who called it an act of sabotage.

“The West already accuses us of blowing up the gas pipeline ourselves,” he said. “We must understand the geopolitical confrontation, the war, our war with the West on the scale and extent on which it is unfolding. In other words, we must join this battle with a mortal enemy who does not hesitate to use any means, including exploding gas pipelines.”

The nonstop messaging campaign may be working, at least for now. A senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said Russians feel threatened by the West.

He said that there was anger, fear and an idea to hide and flee, but that it wasn’t against Putin. “Part of the anger, even among those avoiding mobilization, is against the West, or Ukrainians.”

The primary utility, many U.S. officials say, would be as part of a last-ditch effort by Mr. Putin to halt the Ukrainian counteroffensive, by threatening to make parts of Ukraine uninhabitable. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe some of the most sensitive discussions inside the administration.

It’s also a commentary on the grave uncertainty over how Russian President Vladimir Putin, a self-styled strongman, might react to the increasing possibility of defeat in Ukraine in a war to which he has nailed his political survival.

Biden’s comments on Thursday underscore the burden that he now shoulders since the first president since the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago who faces the frightening reality that nuclear war with Moscow is possible. Historical accounts show that at one point Armageddon could have been triggered accidentally. In October 1962 there was a 13-day standoff between Washington and Moscow over Russian plans to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. Nikita Khrushchev backed down after intense messages were exchanged between Washington and Moscow.

The context of that remark is critically important, even though the use of the word “Armageddon” has drawn all the headlines. White House officials said that the idea that Russia could deploy tactical strikes does not represent a step below maximum escalation, as per their doctrine.

The military his is in is, you might say, significantly outperformed, so he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.

The comments were also the latest unguarded moment from Biden during an off-camera fundraiser, where the President has repeatedly deployed more candor and colorful rhetoric he might in scripted remarks. Officials say his off-the-cuff remarks at fundraisers tend to be a brief and unvarnished window into real concerns or debates Biden is grappling with at the moment.

Biden is trying to find out what is Putin’s ramp. “Where does he find a way out? Where did he find himself when he lost face and power in Russia? Biden said.

The President may have been thinking of Kennedy’s commencement address at American University in Washington in 1963 in which he reflected on the lessons of the Cuban missile crisis and the risks posed by weapons that could end the world.

If we were to use that kind of course in the nuclear age, this would be evidence of our policy’s bankrupt state and collective death-wish for the world.

“The fact is that President Putin and Russia have shown absolutely no interest in any kind of meaningful diplomacy. It is very difficult to pursue it unless they do.

Biden appeared to be making an argument, which will be echoed by Putin, that the idea of using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine could be contained and not lead to a larger conflagration.

Nuclear weapons are too terrible to use and any nation that ever used them would be writing their own death warrant.

Biden did not believe there was anything that made it easy to use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.

The most important goal of his presidency is to shepherd the world through the most dangerous nuclear brinkmanship in 60 years.

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Biden’s blunt assessment caught several senior US officials by surprise, largely due to that lack of any new intelligence to drive them and the grim language Biden deployed.

But White House officials closely watched – and studied for clues – Putin’s speech last week – and much like his speech just prior to the invasion, it raised alarms. It’s been an element of several internal discussions in recent days, highlighting that while the world may brush off the latest in months of Putin statements seemingly detached from obvious reality, the Biden “doesn’t have that luxury,” one official said.

Biden is giving a window to an ongoing discussion inside his administration as it seeks to calibrate the response to that environment.

His remarks are usually only slotted for 10 minutes but in the past he has stretched to half an hour or more, expounding on various topics. Reporters are escorted out after Biden speaks to donors.

It wasn’t scripted and aides behind the scenes in Washington didn’t know about Biden’s remarks until after the news reports and dispatches of the press pool.

The President used Armageddon to illustrate the point that there is no Escalation ladder when it comes to nuclear weapons. Any move in that direction sets off a cascading response that only has one outcome.

“We take any nuclear weapons or nuclear saber-rattling very seriously here,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters earlier this month. She said that there wasn’t any reason to change our strategic nuclear posture nor to be aware that Russia was about to use nuclear weapons.

One official characterized the speech as “insane,” and while that bolstered the US view of Russian weakness and isolation, it also further increased concern about Putin’s willingness to escalate beyond the level of a rational actor.

The remarks made on Thursday were not said in public by the White House, and there are no plans to speak about them in public on Friday. One official said if Biden wants to address it himself it will be clear when he goes to Maryland later in the morning.

More broadly, the most important element remains that US officials have seen no change in posture or specific intelligence that raises the threat level above where it has been.

In the last few weeks, the US has been communicating with Russia about the scale of their responses should Putin choose to follow that path. Those details remain closely held, and officials say that won’t change any time soon.

With that deal, which came to light only later, a disaster that could have killed tens of millions of Americans and untold numbers of Soviet citizens was averted.

Russian attacks on a tourist-site tourist site in Kyiv: Planned attacks on civilians and infrastructure after the Crimea bridge explosion

Russian missiles destroyed a glass-bottomed footbridge in Kyiv that was a popular tourist site and crashed down near a children’s playground as rush hour began on Monday. In the early days of the invader, there were power outages that knocked out water supplies and transport but they had largely subsided in recent months.

The attacks snatched away the semblance of normality that city dwellers, who spent months earlier in the war in subways turned into air raid shelters, have managed to restore to their lives and raised fears of new strikes.

If anything, the targets on Monday reflected Putin’s need for new targets because of his inability to win battles on the battlefield.

The bombing of power installations, in particular, Monday appeared to be an unsubtle hint of the misery the Russian President could inflict as winter sets in, even as his forces retreat in the face of Ukrainian troops using Western arms.

The attacks on civilians, which killed at least 14 people, caused new attention to what actions the US and its allies should take to respond to the proxy war against them being waged by Moscow.

President Joe Biden offered advanced air systems to the Ukrainian President, but the White House didn’t specify exactly what would be sent.

John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, suggested Washington was looking favorably on Ukraine’s requests and was in touch with the government in Kyiv almost every day. “We do the best we can in subsequent packages to meet those needs,” he told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.

Kirby said that a trend was developing that would see Putin shift his strategy from a losing battlefield war to a campaign to hurt civilians and cause devastating damage on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

“It likely was something that they had been planning for quite some time. Now that’s not to say that the explosion on the Crimea bridge might have accelerated some of their planning,” Kirby said.

The resume of the Russian general in charge of the war, Sergey Surovikin, who was stationed in Syria and Chechnya, would suggest an onslaught on civilians. In both places, Russia indiscriminately bombarded civilian areas and razed built-up districts and infrastructure and is accused of committing serious human rights violations.

The attacks in Ukrainian could be the start of another conflict in the area, as expressed by the French President.

Monday’s attacks, and further strikes throughout the week, were evidence of Russian President Vladimir Putin lashing out after a series of setbacks in the war that have put him under pressure domestically.

The chief diplomatic advisor to Zelensky told CNN on The Situation Room that 56 of the missiles and drones shot down by Ukraine were fired by Russia in revenge for the bridge explosion.

“So imagine if we had modern equipment, we probably could raise the number of those drones and missiles downed and not kill innocent civilians or wound and injure Ukrainians,” Zhovkva said.

The lesson of this horrible war is that everything Putin has done to fracture a nation he doesn’t believe has the right to exist has only strengthened and unified it.

Olena Gnes, a mother of three who is also a videographer, told Anderson Cooper she was angry at the return of fear and violence to the lives of Ukrainians from a new round of Russian “terror.”

“This is just another terror to provoke maybe panic, to scare you guys in other countries or to show to his own people that he is still a bloody tyrant, he is still powerful and look what fireworks we can arrange,” she said.

“We do not feel desperate … we are more sure even than before that Ukraine will win and we need it as fast as possible because … only after we win in this war and only after Russia is defeated, we will have our peace back here.”

MOSCOW — For months, Russia’s state media has insisted that the country was hitting only military targets in Ukraine, leaving out the suffering that the invasion has brought to millions of civilians.

On Monday, state television not only reported on the suffering, but also flaunted it. It showed plumes of smoke and carnage in central Kyiv, along with empty store shelves and a long-range forecast promising months of freezing temperatures there.

The relative calm in Ukrainian cities far from the country’s battlefields was shattered by two painfully familiar sounds this week: the ominous ring of the air raid sirens, and the eruptions of Russian attacks.

With the cold months nearing and likely bringing a slowdown in ground combat, experts say the next weeks of the war are now expected to be vital, and another potential spike in intensity looms over Ukraine as each side seeks to strike another blow.

Not for the first time, the war is teetering towards an unpredictable new phase. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.

The recent days have shown that sites beyond the theater of ground fighting are vulnerable to attacks. It remains unclear exactly how the Kerch bridge bombing was carried out – and Kyiv has not claimed responsibility – but the fact that a target so deep in Russian-held territory could be successfully hit hinted at a serious Ukrainian threat towards key Russian assets.

Giles said theUkraine victory is more plausible now than it was a long time ago. Russia’s response is likely to get worse.

Ukrainian troops hoist the country’s flag above a building in Vysokopillya, in the southern Kherson region, last month. Ukrainian officials say they have freed hundreds of settlements since the counter-offensive began.

Russia said Thursday its forces would help evacuate residents of occupied Kherson to other areas, as Ukraine’s offensive continued to make gains in the region. The announcement came after the Kherson administration head appealed to the Kremlin for help moving people out of harms way, an apparent indication that Russian forces are having a hard time in the face of Ukrainian advances.

The counter-offensives have shifted the focus of the war, and disproved a suggestion that while Ukraine could defend territory it didn’t have the ability to seize the ground.

“If they can get to Christmas with the frontline looking roughly as it is, that’s a huge success for the Russians given how botched this has been since February.”

Landing a major blow in Donbas would send another powerful signal, and Ukraine will be eager to improve on its gains before temperatures plummet on the battlefield, and the full impact of rising energy prices is felt around Europe.

Giles said that there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly. The winter energy crisis in Europe and the destruction of power infrastructure inUkraine are always going to be a test of resilience for Ukraine and its Western backers.

NATO leaders have vowed to stand behind Ukraine regardless of how long the war takes, but several European countries – particularly those that relied heavily on Russian energy – are staring down a crippling cost-of-living crisis which, without signs of Ukrainian progress on the battlefield, could endanger public support.

Ukraine’s national electricity company, Ukrenergo, says it has stabilized the power supply to Kyiv and central regions of Ukraine after much of the country’s electricity supply was disrupted by Russian missile attacks on Monday and Tuesday. But Ukrainian Prime Minister has warned that “there is a lot of work to do” to fix damaged equipment, and asked Ukrainians to reduce their energy usage during peak hours.

Experts believe it remains unlikely that Russia’s aerial bombardment will form a recurrent pattern; while estimating the military reserves of either army is a murky endeavor, Western assessments suggest Moscow may not have the capacity to keep it up.

The Russian commanders on the ground know that their supplies are running out, according to a speech by Jeremy Fleming, the UK’s spy chief.

The use of limited precision weaponry by Russia in this role may restrict Putin from disrupting the ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensives.

Justin Bronk, a military expert with the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), agreed with that assessment, telling CNN that, “Ukrainian interception success rates against Russian cruise missiles have risen significantly since the start of the invasion in February.”

“The Russians don’t have the know-how to sustain a high-tempo missile assault into the future, which is why the barrage of missile strikes will be an occasional feature reserved for shows of extreme outrage,” he said.

Any further Belarusian involvement in the war could also have a psychological impact, Puri suggested. “Everyone’s mind in Ukraine and in the West has been oriented towards fighting one army,” he said. Inside Russia, Belarus joining the invasion “would play into Putin’s narrative that this war is about reuniting the lands of ancient Rus states.”

“The reopening of a northern front would be another new challenge for Ukraine,” Giles said. It would provide Russia a new route into the Kharkiv oblast (region), which has been recaptured by Ukraine, should Putin prioritize an effort to reclaim that territory, he said.

By flipping the narrative of the conflict over the past two months, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has achieved one of his own key objectives: showing Ukraine’s Western allies that their military aid can help Kyiv win the war.

Ahead of a NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that more systems were needed for Ukraine to better halt missile attacks.

This week, a number of incoming missiles were shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems provided by NATO Allies.

The systems that arrived this week from Germany and the United States are badly needed by Ukranian’s.

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Giles said that Russia can try to get governments in Europe to end their support for the Ukrainian people in order to make the war personal.

This week’s air strikes may point towards that endeavor; Ukraine’s Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told CNN that around 30% of energy infrastructure in Ukraine was hit by Russian missiles on Monday and Tuesday. This was the first time that Russia has targeted energy infrastructure since the war began, according to the minister.

Experts say the coming weeks are crucial for both the battlefield and Europe. “As ever, where Putin goes next depends on how the rest of the world is responding,” Giles said. “Russia’s attitude is shaped by the failure of Western countries to confront and deter it.”

Today, Russia is believed to have the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, including 1,000-2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, says Hans Kristensen, head of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington think tank. While the public often imagines tactical nukes as smaller weapons, Kristensen says the Russian arsenal is diverse. He says they have a wide range of bombyields, which goes up to a couple of hundred kilotons.

The Director of Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group says that the classical nuclear deterrence has been effective at containing the Ukraine war.

He says that the U.S. would need to use force if Russia used a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. He believes a conventional strike, perhaps on the military unit that launched the nuke, would send a powerful message.

For the use of a nuclear weapon to be shocking, “You really need to make it clear that you are willing to target civilians, and that means, to put it bluntly, killing a lot of people,” he says.

She believes that the Russians would see a conventional attack on their nuclear capacity as a nuclear attack. Things could escalate further from there.

But Oliker points out that all of this is still highly theoretical. She hopes that the two sides will still find a way to begin de-escalating the conflict.

“If I try to tell myself a story of how to get there, it requires a whole bunch of leaps and jumps,” she says. There are some leaps and jumps on the path to global thermonuclear war.

Russia’s nuclear bombing campaign against a far-right Ukrainian organization claiming to be a pro-Russian terrorist organization

Similarly, Jeremy Fleming, director of the UK’s GCHQ intelligence agency, said last week, “I would hope that we will see indicators if they started to go down that path.” He said there was a good chance of detecting Russian preparations.

Russia’s nuclear bombs are stored in military facilities and need to be taken to either aircraft or a missile base for deployment. The global community knows the location of roughly 12 nuclear weapons storage facilities in Russia, and this activity is likely to originate here, as noted by the head of Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. He adds that the US has intimate knowledge of most of the sites because it worked with Russia to improve the physical security of the repositories between 2003 and 2012 as part of an initiative called Cooperative Threat Reduction.

Sergei Lavrov, Russian foreign minister, said at a press conference on October 24 that the information on the use of a nuclear bomb by Ukraine is reliable. Defense minister Sergei Shoigu had conveyed this supposedly reliable information to the leaders of the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Turkey, according to read-outs from the Russian government.

A video uploaded in February by a popular account with nearly 100,000 followers claimed to show a far-right Ukrainian organization making a bomb out of nuclear material. Such a bomb would be used againstRussian troops during an invasion according to the account.

The video was quickly found to be rife with spelling errors and showed common industrial equipment, according to a Ukrainian fact-check organization. Over the last eight months, the claim remained a constant reference for pro-Kremlin Telegram accounts, which were seen hundreds of thousands of times.