Ukraine: this is not a bluff

By Richard North - September 22, 2022

According to president Putin, speaking yesterday morning on Russian television, Washington, London and Brussels are openly encouraging Kiev to move the hostilities to Russian territory.

They openly say that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield by any means, and subsequently deprived of political, economic, cultural and any other sovereignty and ransacked.

Says the president, they have even resorted to the nuclear blackmail. And here, he says, “I am referring not only to the Western-encouraged shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which poses a threat of a nuclear disaster, but also to the statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the leading Nato countries on the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction – nuclear weapons – against Russia”.

Responding to this claim, Putin reminded “those who make such statements regarding Russia” that “our country has different types of weapons as well, and some of them are more modern than the weapons Nato countries have”.

He then went on to make the part of his statement which has most widely been quoted by the Western media. “In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us”, he said. “This is not a bluff”.

Addressing “the citizens of Russia”, he told them that they could “rest assured that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be defended – I repeat – by all the systems available to us”. Those who are using nuclear blackmail against us, he said, “should know that the wind rose can turn around”.

Then, in what could only have been a reference to The Great Patriotic War, he concluded that: “It is our historical tradition and the destiny of our nation to stop those who are keen on global domination and threaten to split up and enslave our Motherland. Rest assured that we will do it this time as well”.

It is always best to be careful when analysing English language renditions of foreign language speeches, but since this is the official Kremlin translation, one can take it that it is not too far from the original. All one can say of it, though, is that if Putin really believes what he was saying, then we may have a problem.

Certainly, though, not all Russians believe the rhetoric. Flights out of Russia are said to be fully booked by young men seeking to evade the call-up, while opposition activists within Russia have called for nationwide protests against mobilisation.

“Thousands of Russian men – our fathers, brother and husbands – will be thrown into the grinder of war”, wrote an anonymous activist speaking for Vesna, an opposition group. “What will they die for? For what will their wives and children shed tears? For Putin’s palace? The war is no longer ‘somewhere over there’. It has come to our country, to our homes, for our loved ones”.

Whether or not the determination to “use of all weapon systems available to us” is a bluff or not, we have no possible means of knowing. And given that most “experts” are so often wrong about Russian intentions and capabilities, we cannot rely on expert guidance. Whether Putin intends to deploy nuclear weapons, and under what circumstances, is simply unknowable.

Of the many pundits with similar views, though, Roger Boyes, The Times diplomatic editor thinks Putin’s speech was intended to banish the doubts of his allies more than to spread dismay in the West.

After all, Boyes asserts, Putin still steers clear of describing the conflict as a war. Wars end in victory or defeat. Special military operations can be halted at any time the Russian president considers politically opportune.

Nevertheless, Biden’s speech to the UN General Assembly yesterday cannot have helped to soothe Putin’s fevered brow. In front of the world’s leaders in New York, he roundly condemned Russia, “a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council” which had “invaded its neighbour [and] attempted to erase a sovereign state from the map”.

Russia had “shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter – no more important than the clear prohibition against countries taking the territory of their neighbour by force”, Biden said, adding: “Again, just today, president Putin has made overt nuclear threats against Europe and a reckless disregard for the responsibilities of the non-proliferation regime”.

Now Russia was calling up more soldiers to join the fight, and the Kremlin was organising sham referendums to try to annex parts of Ukraine, Biden declared, “this world should see these outrageous acts for what they are. Putin claims he had to act because Russia was threatened. But no one threatened Russia, and no one other than Russia sought conflict”.

Well into his speech, Biden essentially confirmed Putin’s worst fears, saying: “it’s no secret that in the contest between democracy and autocracy, the United States – and I, as President – champion a vision for our world that is grounded in the values of democracy”.

Having said that the United States was “working closely with our allies and partners to impose costs on Russia, to deter attacks against Nato territory, to hold Russia accountable for the atrocities and war crimes”, he went on to declare that the US was “determined to defend and strengthen democracy at home and around the world”.

Despite that content, the tone of the speech was pretty anodyne, with the usual boilerplate about democracy and liberty. But the conclusion cannot have pleased the Russian president. “Ukraine has the same rights that belong to every sovereign nation. We will stand in solidarity with Ukraine. We will stand in solidarity against Russia’s aggression. Period”, Biden said.

Zelensky, appearing later by video link, took no prisoners. “A crime has been committed against Ukraine”, he said, “and we demand just punishment”. Adding that: “The crime was committed against our state borders. The crime was committed against the lives of our people”, he closed down any options that Putin might have, declaring: “Ukraine demands punishment for trying to steal our territory” and for the murder of thousands of people.

According to the Guardian, Ukrainian officials were also less than anodyne. Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Zelensky, called on world leaders to issue a firm warning to Putin, making it clear that any attempt to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine would result in catastrophic consequences for Russia.

“The other nuclear states need to say very firmly that as soon as Russia even thinks of carrying out nuclear strikes on foreign territory – in this case the territory of Ukraine – there will be swift retaliatory nuclear strikes to destroy the nuclear launch sites in Russia”, he said.

Podolyak’s fear is that the analytical capacity of Putin’s circle “is very low at the moment”, arguing that “they don’t understand all the risks of what they are doing and where it has already brought the Russian Federation”. As such, he said, “It’s hard to make predictions when a person is completely irrational”.

The Guardian thinks it is unlikely that western leaders will heed Ukrainian calls for direct retaliatory threats, but Podolyak tells the paper that letting Russia get away with nuclear threats would erode the long-standing principle that nuclear weapons can only be used defensively when the survival of a country was at stake.

“We have a big country that enters Ukrainian territory, starts a war, seizes some territory, and then says this territory is now ours and if you try to take it back we’ll use nuclear weapons. It looks absolutely absurd, and furthermore it destroys the whole global system of nuclear deterrence”, Podolyak says, possibly missing the nuances of Putin’s mental gymnastics, where he seems to have convinced himself that Ukraine and then Nato are the aggressors.

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, is also cited. She says that Putin’s threats should be taken seriously but adds that much would depend on how the West responded. “You can’t have someone wandering around with a grenade with the pin removed and threatening everyone with it just because he can” she tells the Guardian.

Vereshchuk also called on western politicians to spell out to Putin what pursuing the nuclear option would mean in practice. “There should be a firm ultimatum to Russia with what will happen. Up to now, there hasn’t been… We need it to be seriously and clearly articulated”.

Her view is that the Russians understand only force, and only asymmetrical force, although she declined to say exactly what she believed the West should threaten.

In that vacuum lies the real conundrum. Low yield nuclear weapons can be used in such a way as to confine their effects entirely to within Ukraine’s borders, even to the extent that radioactive fallout can be minimised and contained.

The fact of a nuclear weapon being deployed, therefore, is not necessarily an Armageddon event, triggering an all-out nuclear war that leaves London, Washington and Moscow as glass-coated car parks. Much will depend on how, when, and where, such a weapon is deployed, its size, type and the method of delivery – whether high altitude air burst or ground burst.

Actual effects, measured on the ground may, therefore, dictate the response in the event that Putin decides to unleash the power of the atom. And, living with that uncertainty, the world suddenly feels a much more dangerous place.