Last Tuesday, March 21, as the end point of the visit of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Russia, the governments of both countries published a joint communiqué in which the ties of union were strengthened and the international situation generated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine was assessed. Without going too deep into the matter to protect China’s supposed neutrality, the statement concluded that “In a nuclear war there can be no winners.”in addition to appealing to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a necessary and essential tool.
Four days later, in an interview with Russian state television, Putin announced the sending ten planes capable of carrying nuclear missiles to Belarus, in what could only be considered a threat to their NATO enemies. It is understandable that Putin had already reported this move to Xi at his meeting and that Xi took it for what it is: bravado.
Putin used the excuse of sending depleted uranium to Ukraine for use in conventional weapons by the British government. The word “uranium” can serve as an excuse for anything, but the truth is that Russia itself uses it for its non-nuclear weapons and, in fact, it was rumored at the time that it was using it in the Ukraine itself.
[Ucrania se jacta de quitar a Rusia un ‘matatanques’ tras la amenaza nuclear de Putin desde Bielorrusia]
What was the point then of such a clear and public threat? The usual: intimidate. Russia does not want to start World War IIIRussia does not want a nuclear holocaust, and Russia certainly does not want to see its great cities burn to the ground. What it wants is simple: expand eastward and establish itself as the danger it was to the Western world in the days of the Soviet Union. A military superpower whose mere presence on the border makes anyone tremble.
Message to public opinion
However, that is not what we are seeing in Ukraine. When the USSR rebelled against him in Hungary, he sent in his tanks and put down the protests. When an uncomfortable government arose in Czechoslovakia, he would send his army to Prague and that was it. Now, he is not even capable of taking Bakhmut by combining the efforts of his conventional units with those of the Wagner Group mercenaries. Advancing a few kilometers in the Donbas and reaching the Dnieper River from the south has cost them tens of thousands of lives.
The Iskander is a tactical missile system that can deliver nuclear weapons, with a range of up to 500 kilometers.
Reuters
Part of that failure must be attributed to the undoubted courage and strategic expertise of the Ukrainian military. Another part, this is indisputable, has to do with the logistical support that the West and, especially, NATO, is toasting kyiv. In the Kremlin they are convinced that, without such support, they could resume the original idea of their “special military operation”, overthrow Zelensky and, at the very least, annex the corridor announced a year ago from Kharkov to Odessa, allowing a puppet government in the rest of the country with which to sign peace.
As long as the West continues to send tanks, fighters and ammunition, as long as it continues with its economic sanctions and its elite military training, it is impossible for Russia to achieve its military objectives. The problem for the Kremlin is that he has no way of getting that help to stop other than by threat… and that threat can only be that of the apocalypse.
Putin, as a former KGB agent and a man versed in mastering the mind of others, knows what our fears are. He is aware that just the use of the word “nuclear” generates a wave of dread in Western public opinion. And that’s why he plays with it all the time.
This same Monday, Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, insisted on the idea: “Russia has enough weapons to destroy any country… and that includes the United States.” Putin’s great hope in the short-medium term is that the war becomes an electoral issue. That his close collaborators in the Republican Party, starting with his great friend and admirer, Donald Trump, convince the average citizen that sending weapons to Ukraine is dangerous not only for the security of the world… but for their own his family.
this is not 1962
Putin’s messages -we are not going into his actions, since these infrastructures have not yet been sent to Belarus and may never be sent- have a part for internal consumption, since he needs to present a forceful image before a Russian civil society that does not She is the Soviet submissive and she will be watching with dread as young people travel to the front and do not return, and have a part of their propaganda directed not so much at Western politicians, but at their voters.
If Russia is capable of frightening the various public opinions sufficiently, it is to be expected that their respective governments will gradually yield to their requests.
Ukrainian service members fire an M119 howitzer at a front line near Bakhmut.
Reuters
If we return to the Belarusian question, one will have to ask what is the change in practice. I am not talking about the theory because we know the theory: it is exactly the one expressed in the joint statement issued by China and Russia just a week ago. The one that China has been defending since the beginning of the war with total conviction, because not in vain, China has its own nuclear weapons and its own conflicts with Western powers and has never, at any time, resorted to the atomic threat.
Belarus is not Cuba 1962. In the era of hyperprecise intercontinental missiles, placing a nuclear weapon a few hundred kilometers closer or further from a potential target means nothing.
It is not a major threat to Ukraine because obviously Ukraine already shares a border with Russia. It would be enough to send those weapons to Belgorod or, directly, to Mariupol. Nor is it a greater threat to NATO because Russia already shares a border with the Baltic states – Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania – which are part of the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance.
It is not even a strategic novelty, a step forward that until now would not have been taken. Russia already announced a couple of months ago to great fanfare that it was going to incorporate nuclear submarines into its Baltic Sea fleet. In 1962, Khrushchev hatched a secret plan to place missile launchers a few miles off the coast of Florida. He didn’t announce it in a televised interview and he didn’t just move his weapons a few kilometers: he crossed an entire ocean. The situation is obviously not the same.
The complicity of Belarus
The status of Belarus does not change much either. We all know that it is an appendage of the Kremlin. What is surprising, in fact, is being the resistance of lukashenko to declare war on Ukraine despite persistent requests from Moscow. The armored vehicles that wanted to take Kiev in five days around February 2022 entered from Belarus. On the Belarusian border with Ukraine, military maneuvers are repeated with Russian troops that only seek to intimidate the Zelensky regime.
In short, there is nothing new. US intelligence immediately went out of its way to reassure the world because it is very good for the world to calm down right now. Russia needs a victory, but it doesn’t need self-destruction.
Many repeat that such a victory is inevitable because “a nuclear power cannot be defeated.” They ignore what happened in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. They ignore what happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s and in the 21st century. The great superpowers have lost pseudo-colonial wars in the past without destroying the planet. They have skirted the issue and something else.
Putin will do the same if Russia loses the war in Ukraine. He is doing the same thing in the last few months, in fact. What was going to be a great offensive to recapture Donbas in its entirety turned into a heroic liberation of Bakhmut because only in Bakhmut did the offensive seem to be successful. Now that not even that, there is constant talk of Avdiivka, which is still practically a suburb of the capital Donetsk, in pro-Russian hands since 2015.
Russia will win or lose and the world will continue to spin. Now, to win he needs more than sending men to slaughter and spending millions on weapons. Need to twist the political will of the West. In short, it needs him to give up and relent in his efforts to help a sovereign country that is the victim of an intolerable aggression. In Russia they have always been very convinced that while they kill bears with their bare hands, we Westerners are decadent and fearful. Perhaps they are right, but at the moment everything indicates that it is not such a big deal. Neither one nor the other.
