Andrey Piontkovsky

The truth about Putin’s nuclear threats

Vladimir Putin (Credit: Getty images)

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.

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