A subject that disappeared for some time but is once again in the headlines due to the obvious defeat of the Russian army
in Ukraine, the subject that is being discussed by everyone on both sides of the Atlantic today is:
will Putin use nuclear weapons in Ukraine?
Disregarding the exact form it might take, just: whether or not Putin, facing the inevitable defeat, will cross the “nuclear” line?
To answer this question, we need to take a step back. Because we can’t talk about the future unless we understand how the
same people, the same system were acting in the past.
And most importantly, unless we understand how current circumstances are different from anything that happened before.
Not from our perspective, but from the perspective of the system itself. The system is now almost quarter a century old,
and we could observe it in all kinds of different situations and it always acted in the same way.
So there are things to be discussed, let's do just that.
THE TACTICS OF WAITING OUT
We talked about it many times before, but considering the circumstances it’s important to reiterate:
during the entire Putin's reign the regime knew only one way of reacting to any crisis: waiting out.
The common proverb that says “those who do nothing don’t make mistakes” was always understood in the wrong way
by the Russian government: if you do nothing, you can’t make a mistake.
An economic crisis? Well a market economy can’t collapse. It will eventually stabilize itself.
Those who are destined to go bankrupt will go bankrupt, the unemployed will find jobs eventually,
it’s either that or starve to death after all. In two or three years, one way or another, the economy will stabilize.
And since we were doing nothing during all that time, we cannot be held accountable for anything.
It was the same with the covid. Some propagandists even said it out loud: those who are destined to die, will die.
Mostly people of age. Will it be 100%? Nope. 10%? Again, no.
People will be dying all over the country over a long time, so it won’t be all at once in one place, and it will be mostly the elderly.
A million dying in their beds and in intensive care over a period of a year or so is not a national disaster, it won’t have any
political consequences, it’s nothing more than a million small disasters for a million families.
But a real quarantine, strict vaccination measures, direct interference into people’s private lives, any concrete measures,
these things would have political consequences, and the resentment would be not against some tiny RNA molecule 100
nanometers in size, but against those who introduce and implement the repressive measures.
Sooner or later, the pandemic will end: sooner or later people will stop dying in masses from covid
and everything will get back to normal. No problem can last forever.
Especially when you don’t have competitive elections and independent media, if there is no one to thumb
your nose at your failures, if any subject can simply be removed from discussion —
in such circumstances, there is nothing you can’t wait out in a bunker.
From the beginning of Spring and till the end of summer we could observe a familiar picture.
The war was getting “routinized”. 2014 scenario didn’t happen, but we can still do 2015:
there is some war going on somewhere and some people die there, but basically,
both sides sit in their trenches and nothing happens.
The war doesn’t influence the internal life of the country, it’s being fought by contractors, mercenaries, and convicts.
Eventually it will resolve on its own. Yes, we didn’t capture Ukraine, but Ukraine too cannot drive
the occupiers from its territory. Over time, it will just come to naught, and will turn into the familiar
“neither war nor peace, neither black nor white, keep your mouths shut”.
The further, the more likely some divine interference will happen, some external factor.
Like an abnormally cold winter may force Europe to lift some of the sanctions, and in the USA,
they may elect someone like Trump who will cut off the military aid to Ukraine.
The world will keep changing, the support for Ukraine may wane out, the war may get replaced by other news
and other catastrophes, the ever-changing outside world will eventually take the form we want it to,
and Putin isn’t in a hurry, he can always wait for the perfect moment for another attack.
You may remember how propaganda savored news like: Ukraine didn’t get any new promises from its Western allies
regarding weapons supplies in july.
There, now it’s our time, soon everyone will forget about Ukraine.
Ukraine disagreed, and approximately since the mid-summer, after Ukraine got Himars,
Putin has gotten into a situation unlike any that he encountered before.
The crisis refused to resolve itself, and is getting worse with each passing day.
If he keeps acting like nothing happens and refuses to make decisions, it will be only a matter of time until
not only the territories occupied after February 24, but also Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea are liberated.
For the first time in his reign the time is working against Putin, not for him. For the first time he has found himself in a situation:
either you make bad decisions or you lose quickly.
For the first time he cannot just wait it out.
And this is the prime paradox.
The mobilization, the formal annexation of territories, and the threat of a nuclear war, our today’s subject,
it all looks like an escalation, but it’s really not. It’s nothing but a way of intimidating the opponents,
Ukraine and its allies, so that the war that goes badly could return to the state of a frozen conflict,
and Putin himself could return into the mode of waiting until problems go away on their own.
What is Putin trying to tell us with his neverending nuclear threats?
He is trying to tell us: dear colleagues, I cannot accept defeat, defeat would mean loss of power for me,
and with it, the loss of my life, by defeating my army in battle, you’re practically trying to kill me.
Keep in mind that i’m taking you all with me.
WHY A NUCLEAR STRIKE IS IMPROBABLE
So should we take Putin’s nuclear threats seriously, whether we’re talking about a tactical nuke, a sabotage at a nuclear
facility, or the “dirty bomb”, that is, a conventional bomb that use nuclear elements to contaminate an area?
It’s a good question that has no good answer to it.
After February 24 there are no good answers to anything, we can only discuss probabilities, to present arguments
for or against something, which we will do now.
First of all, the use of nuclear weapons would be the last stage of escalation, there is nothing beyond it.
No more threats to make, nothing else to bide time with.
At the same time, Ukraine’s allies can escalate as much as they want to: they can establish a total embargo
on the Russian economy, that is, to ban any cooperation not only with Russia and Russian companies,
but with companies that do business in Russia in any shape or form.
They can radically increase the weapon supplies, provide modern tanks, tactical missiles, modern planes,
lift all restrictions on attacks against Russian territory. They can join the war, which can take many forms.
Not necessarily with ground forces, but the former CIA chief was correct when he said that it wouldn’t be a problem
for NATO to sink the entire Russian Black Sea fleet for example.
And missiles from Eastern Europe can reach the Russian army group just fine,
there is no need for NATO soldiers to cross the Ukrainian border for that.
Not only the nuclear strike in the middle of Europe can become the new Pearl Harbor,
the event that would make NATO realize that now they must fully commit to victory.
It would also take away Putin’s option to intimidate. Because the stakes simply cannot be raised any further.
In addition, nuclear ammunition and nuclear tactical nukes are a weird kind of weapon.
They cause massive destruction in a local area and, being nuclear weapons, they contaminate the area
for both the enemy and your own army.
But at the same time it’s not clear how a series of such local strikes can change the overall situation at the front.
The main argument in favor of a nuclear strike being unlikely is that the risks of it are known but it’s unclear
what you can achieve with it.
You’ll certainly have an unpredictable and uncontrollable escalation, make those who hesitated before go all in,
but you won’t have victory, and certainly you won’t have frozen conflict.
The second argument in favor of a nuclear strike being improbable comes from the fact that after 23 years,
and especially after the last 8 months, we’ve learned Putin reasonably well. Putin always acts like a bully.
He won’t jump into a fight against someone who can hit back.
Many examples from recent history could be provided, but the most recent one is the mobilization.
The regions that had protests and those in which people started to flee in panic, like in Moscow,
the places where there was at least some societal resistance, those places were soon left alone.
The burden fell on the regions in which the mobilization went “without a scandal”.
The places in which people obediently followed into the buses, soon had even more buses sent there.
The story of “Putin never gives up” is something that the Russian propaganda invented and then believed in.
The hilarious truth is, Putin always gives up. Whenever he realizes that he took a piece that he cannot swallow,
he immediately tries to spit it out and crawl as far away from it as possible.
We already know the main reason that led Putin to start a full-scale war against Ukraine:
for years, the special services were building an illusory world for him.
In this world, Putin would not face any organized resistance, people would greet him with flowers and ovations.
People today tend to draw direct comparisons between the insane decision to begin the war against Ukraine
with the decision to go nuclear.
Like, if Putin was foolish enough to start a war in the middle of Europe, what’s to stop him from starting a nuclear war?
That comparison is incorrect at its core. Putin didn’t make the decision to start a war in the middle of Europe.
Putin made the decision to conduct a pre-electoral campaign. It turned into a full scale war with thousands of people killed,
mobilization and all that stuff from the 1940th against his will,
simply because he was attacking an imaginary Ukraine but was repelled by a real one.
Knowing this, we can’t be comparing the attack on Ukraine with using nuclear weapons.
From our perspective, those decisions are qualitatively the same — they’re both insane decisions,
but from Putin’s perspective, they have nothing in common.
That was the good news. And if you were looking for reassurance in this difficult time,
you probably should close the video now. Now it’s time for arguments for why the possibility of
a nuclear strike is not exactly zero.
And if we’re looking for arguments in the real world, not a world of fantasies, then there are only two.
WHY A NUCLEAR STRIKE IS POSSIBLE
First of all, Putin has obviously painted himself into a corner.
Even from his own mouth we no longer hear about how “special military operation is proceeding according to plan”.
The situation at the front is terrible, and the mobilization not only turned the public opinion upside down,
it has also turned into a total mess and exposed all the flaws of the Russian state: all the thievery, all the eyewash,
incompetence — it’s all everywhere for everyone to see.
No matter what the Russian state does to turn the situation in its favor lately, it only sees failures.
There is no more hope to give citizens a colorful gift before the February 2024 elections.
The situation is deteriorating so rapidly that it would be extremely optimistic for the current system to expect to just stay
in power till february 2024.
When the situation is developing so tragically and so quickly. When nothing helps and everything goes wrong.
When it all happens simultaneously at the front and the rear, and can at any moment create internal instability,
and not just peaceful rallies, but armed clashes. In such a situation a man can easily lose a nerve.
He can decide that there are no other options.
It’s impossible to argue against that argument with logic. We’ve never seen Putin in a situation as critical as this.
We don’t know how far he can go in a futile attempt to save his own life.
It could probably be prevented by those who are supposed to be saving big countries from catastrophes when their leaders
go nuts — the political establishment. Those whom we call “elites”, Putin’s circle.
Unfortunately, we’re now approaching the second argument. Recently, from leaks and investigations, we’ve learned a lot not
only about Putin but also about the people that surround him. Putin really managed to create a kakistocracy.
He literally surrounded himself with the worst of the worst. With the most cowardly, most servile, most thieving,
the most short-sighted. And they all hate each other and they all fear each other.
These people would keep Titanic’s engines running even if the iceberg was to call the engine room
and warn them about its existence. Not because they want to hit the iceberg, not because they want to drown.
But because after 20 years of negative selection the only people left are those who would dig their
own graves without asking questions, they’d keep digging even if they knew it was their grave, simply
because they are instructed to.
During the first days of mobilization, when we saw first videos with conscripts obediently following into buses,
there were grim jokes going around about how these people would stay in lines to be shot after taking loans to buy bullets.
But that joke isn’t about society. The society figured it all out quickly, fled, and hid.
It’s a joke about the elites who just sit and watch how not even their country,
but their very lives are being ruined by just one old fart.
Not because they’re fanatics, not because they’re militarists, but because after 20 years they’ve gotten
so used to never asking questions and doing as instructed, even if it's digging their own graves.
And those who weren’t willing to get used to it, were thrown out, or worse.
Can we expect that any of them can find not the strength or dignity — all that is long gone —
but at least enough instinct of self-preservation, and that Putin will meet his end sooner
than the order to strike will reach those who must execute it.
It’s a big question.
So where are we at? Is the nuclear strike against Ukraine possible in any shape or form?
It seems unlikely.
Do we have any safeguards to prevent it? There is no such safeguard.
Improbable, but possible — this is the correct answer.
Oh, before we finish, I want to show you a video that drew my attention.
A university in Petersburg fired a professor for attending an anti-war protest, and such was his farewell to his students.
He said some truths there, let’s hear it
See you tomorrow!
A moral deed is when you act in accordance with your conscience.
It’s when you listen to your inner self. It’s a situation when you act regardless of your external circumstances.
When you challenge the reality around you. An immoral deed is when you act without listening to your conscience,
when you simply adapt to the reality around you. When you passively take orders from another person.
An investigator who simply writes protocols on people because the higher ups ordered so, acts immorally.
A judge who makes identical decisions after a call from the “above”, acts immorally.
A bureaucrat who does everything to just keep his office, acts immorally,
even when he tries to cover it up with some bureaucratic paragraphs, some papers.
I was happy to be working in this wonderful place. I disagree with my dismissal.
I wrote so in the warrant — I learned the contents, I will challenge it, and I believe that I was acting in accordance
with my conscience. I am convinced that the future of this country belongs to you.
And the older generation with all their ideas and all their opportunism cannot take that future away from you.
I love you all very much, thank you.