For those rooting for Ukraine in the war with Russia, today’s headlines are wonderful news. “Ukrainian forces have broken through Russian defenses in the south of the country while expanding their rapid offensive in the east, seizing back more territory in areas annexed by Russia and threatening its troops’ supply lines.”
The Ukrainian military has stunned the world; the expectation was that Russia would march in and take what they wanted with little or no resistance by Ukrainian forces. No doubt that was Putin’s dream and expectation. Unfortunately for him and his supporters, that’s not the way it has gone right from the start as the Russian military offensive has encountered one disappointment after another.
In addition to reclaiming control of Lyman in the Donetsk region, on Monday, Ukrainian forces also scored significant gains in the south, raising planting their flags over the villages of Arkhanhelske, Myroliubivka, Khreshchenivka, Mykhalivka and Novovorontsovka. According to the source, Oryx, since the invasion, Russia’s total heavy equipment losses, excluding tanks, include: 1027 infantry fighting vehicles, 142 armored personnel carriers, 75 towed artillery pieces, 154 self-propelled artillery pieces, 93 multiple rocket launchers, and 68 surface-to-surface anti-aircraft systems. Not only is this a tremendous loss of materiel, but as of August 2022, according to a report in The Washington Post, Russia had lost as many as 80,000 men.
All this should be wonderful news for those who believe that Ukraine is fighting for democracy and its survival. But there is a paradox inherent in this “good news” and that is, that the worse things go for Russia the more desperate Putin becomes, and the greater the risk that he will raise the stakes and escalate war. Most frightening is that the escalation will involve nuclear weapons. President Vladimir Putin rules the world’s biggest nuclear power and he has repeatedly cautioned the West that any attack on Russia could provoke a nuclear response. Furthermore, mindful of the fact that Washington and European powers may not believe him, he has asserted that he is not bluffing. Many of us believe him.
Just today news services reported that a “huge nuclear train has been spotted on the move” moving towards that Ukrainian border.
On October 3, the lower house of Russia’s parliament approved laws on annexing four occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia, following what many have decreed to be a sham referendum, and that Ukraine and the West denounced as coercive and illegitimate.
Whether the move was legitimate or transparently illegal is irrelevant at this point because Putin’s motive was to create the sort of nationalist rhetoric that would serve as the justification for escalation and retaliation against Ukraine and the West.
Putin now casts the war in Ukraine as an existential battle between Russia and the West, which he claims wants to destroy Russia and grab control of its vast natural resources. By claiming 18% of Ukraine as part of Russia, the room for nuclear threats increases as Putin could cast any attack on these territories as an attack on Russia itself. Russia’s nuclear doctrine allows for a nuclear strike after “aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened”. In other words: self-defense.
“He is bluffing right now,” said Yuri Fyodorov, a military analyst based in Prague. “But what will happen in a week or a month from now is difficult to say – when he understands the war is lost.”
CIA Director William Burns is not dismissing that possibility as bluffing. As he told CBS: “We have to take very seriously his kind of threats given everything that’s at stake.” Burns had also said though, that U.S. intelligence had no “practical evidence” that Putin was moving towards using tactical nuclear weapons imminently. This may have changed as of today, when that nuclear train was seen to be traveling towards the Ukrainian border.
As the dominant global superpower, the United States would in effect have to decide how to respond to any Russian nuclear strike. Russia and the United States control 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads. Nuclear escalation clearly could mean global destruction.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington had warned Moscow of specific “catastrophic consequences” if it used nuclear arms, but is Putin listening? Does he think the US is bluffing?
Putin has also taken the moral ground by reminding Washington (and the world) that only the United States had so far used nuclear weapons in battle – in the 1945 attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki–something for which many nations have yet to forgive the US.
It may come as a surprise to Americans that Russia is the world’s biggest nuclear power based on the number of nuclear warheads: it has 5,977 warheads while the United States has 5,428, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Plus, when it comes to tactical nuclear weapons, Russia has about 10 times the number the United States has.
In short, if Putin’s war continues to go badly, and a worst-case scenario should occur, the US would even be outgunned. At this point then, all “good news” about Ukrainian gains takes on new resonance and needs to be contextualized in the new light that news of the Russian nuclear train implies.
