DOMINIC LAWSON: Putin is a ‘false tsar’ whose threats of nuclear war must not deter us

When the Russian winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, Dmitry Muratov, in an interview with the BBC, warns of his country’s imminent use of nuclear weapons, many in the West will feel at least a pang of terror, followed by the thought : Let’s not provoke Vladimir Putin too much with more military aid to Ukraine.

That’s exactly what the Russian president wants us to think, even though Muratov is anything but a Putin supporter: the independent newspaper he founded and edited, Novaya Gazeta, has been shut down by the Kremlin.

Muratov told BBC Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg: “Two generations have lived without the threat of nuclear war. But this period is over. Will Putin push the nuclear button or not? Who knows? Nobody knows this.

He went on to point out how “Russian state propaganda is preparing people to think that nuclear war is not a bad thing.” On the TV channels here, nuclear war and nuclear weapons are promoted as if they are advertising pet food. . . so that the people here are ready.’

It is true that Russian TV shows on the war in Ukraine are full of pundits almost salivating at the prospect of ‘destroying’ Britain with nuclear strikes in retaliation for our steadfast military support for the Ukrainians, against a backdrop of studious mushroom clouds over London.

SURVIVAL

Then last week Putin announced that Russia would build a tactical nuclear weapons facility in Belarus, accompanied by a warning from that ally’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, that if Russia felt its survival was threatened by the way the West had been funneling weapons to the Ukraine, Moscow could ‘use the most terrible weapon’.

The fact that these remarks followed Putin’s warning that Russia would “respond accordingly” after the UK announced it would supply Kiev with Challenger 2 tank shells containing depleted uranium has led some to suggest that London is provoking a dangerous nuclear escalation.

In fact, as Putin knows, these types of munitions are also used by Russia and have nothing to do with nuclear war.

And in a subsequent statement, the Russian president noted that the transfer of nuclear weapons to Belarus was part of an existing plan ‘out of the context’ of the supply of depleted uranium shells from the UK to Ukraine.

More pertinently, the facilities that Putin says will be built in Belarus take years to build, with no sign of starting.

In other words, while Putin has repeatedly tried to use the threat of nuclear war as a deterrent against the West, while our governments consider how to respond to Ukraine’s request for the weapons they need, our media must be careful not to amplify threats from the Kremlin. , or exaggerate its meaning.

This point is well made in an article published by the Chatham House think tank last week, titled ‘Russian Nuclear Bullying: How Russia Uses Nuclear Threats to Shape Western Responses to Aggression’.

The author, Keir Giles, who worked in Russia for many years, observes: ‘Russia has achieved substantial success in limiting Western support for Ukraine through the use of threatening language about the possible use of nuclear weapons. Western leaders have explicitly justified the reluctance to provide essential military assistance to Ukraine by reference to Russian narratives of uncontrollable escalation.

‘This represents a surprising success for Russian information campaigns. . . It is essential that responses to Russia’s bullying rhetoric be guided by a realistic assessment of its basis in reality, rather than fear-induced paralysis.’

The truth is that every time the West—which in this context means primarily the US government—has gotten over its nervousness about supplying certain categories of weaponry to Ukraine, the Kremlin’s response has not been one of escalation, no matter what. his previous threats.

So, at the start of the war, Putin warned the West that if it interfered at all, “Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead them to consequences the likes of which they have never experienced in their history,” adding, for the benefit of anyone who did not understand the The crudest of hints, that Russia is ‘one of the most powerful nuclear states’.

INVASION

But the West began to intervene with arms supply to kyiv on a hitherto unimaginable scale: and Putin made no move against Washington or London, let alone on a nuclear scale.

Yet President Biden refused for months to supply Ukraine with the HIMARS long-range artillery system, likely due to Putin’s sinister threat that Russia would “hit new targets” if the US did.

But when Washington changed policy and said it would send these devastatingly accurate weapons systems to kyiv, Putin gave a verbal shrug that such weapons “change nothing.”

Now the weapon system that Ukraine has been calling for is the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which has a range of nearly 200 miles and which would allow Kiev to strike major Russian supply routes in occupied southern Ukraine, helping the campaign tremendously. to recapture the vital Black Sea port of Mariupol, where many thousands of Kremlin troops are massed.

However, Washington has so far refused to supply ATACMS. He claims there are issues with availability, but it’s clear the main reason is concern about how Putin would respond, in terms of ‘escalation’.

The same reasoning applied to delays by the West, in particular Germany, in giving a positive response to Ukraine’s longstanding request for tanks: there were fears that this would cross some kind of line and even provoke nuclear retaliation. by the Kremlin. .

Once again, however, when the supposed red line was crossed, there was no ‘escalation’ from Russia, just even more hysterical threats of nuclear strikes against Berlin by the increasingly desperate pseudo-military jocks on state broadcast channels. .

The bottom line is this: If Western governments really want Ukraine to force Russia out of Ukrainian sovereign territory that it has seized since its invasion just over a year ago, there is no point in denying Kiev any of the weapons that would such a result. more likely, and thus help bring the Russians to the negotiating table at a greater military disadvantage.

BRAG

There are some cynics who say that Washington’s goal is to keep the war going as long as possible, and that it doesn’t really want the Ukraine to ‘win’, it just wants the Russians not to win.

But both economically and militarily, it is not at all in the interest of the West for this war to drag on for many years. Nor are we interested in increasing the deterrent to Putin’s nuclear bravado.

Obviously, it is not impossible that it could use a tactical nuclear weapon, if only demonstratively, in the Ukraine. I’ve talked to someone previously closely involved, at the highest level, with our own nuclear war game, and he thought it was highly feasible that Putin would do something like that.

But he added that he saw “no prospect of nuclear war as traditionally understood,” the specter that Vladimir Putin and his propagandists want us to fear could unleash.

Apart from everything else, it is not Putin who could physically or autonomously ‘push the button’: such a decision goes through a chain of command. And even if a desperate Putin gave such an order, would his staff obey it?

Far less publicized than Dmitry Muratov’s nuclear war warning, last week came a very different analysis from Russia’s most celebrated author, Mikhail Shishkin, marking the publication of his book My Russia: War or Peace?

Asked by a Western interviewer if Putin would “go nuclear,” Shishkin replied that while he was sure the Russian president would be prepared to “push the red button,” “no one will carry out his order to destroy the Earth.” Nobody . . . ‘

Shishkin continued: “Putin’s generals told him they would take kyiv in three days, and he miscalculated. Failure. And now he is a false tsar. no one will comply [such] an order from a false tsar.