Russian President Vladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for his country's use of nuclear weapons Tuesday, days after the United States allowed Ukraine to strike inside Russia using American missiles.
The Kremlin announced that Putin had approved an updated nuclear doctrine — a document that governs how Russia uses its nuclear arsenal — including the declaration that Moscow could unleash a nuclear strike if subject to an attack by a nonnuclear country that has the support of a nuclear state.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed later Tuesday that Ukraine had carried out its first strike on Russian territory using U.S.-supplied long-range weapons, hitting a military facility in the Bryansk region with an ATACMS missile.
I suspect Russian ICBMs and SLBMs may well turn out to be in the functional state as their conventuional forces turned out to be. Viktor Beleno's MiG Pilot recounts how ground crews used the MiG-25's ethanol coolant for drinking. I doubt any part ofb an ICBM is drinkable or smokable (yes, I am imagining an ICBM transformed into a really, reaaly big blunt) but still....
Americans always believe that Russia would never use nuclear weapons. But I'm not sure Russia ever believed that a nuclear war was unwinnable. They only believed that "at the current time..."
ReplyDeleteFor example. Russia has been building bomb and fallout shelters for their population almost continuously since the 1950s. While it probably won't do much good in a place like Moscow, they have covered a lot of their cities, and have - actively practiced plans - for evacuating the government from Moscow on short notice.
Putin said from the day he took power in the 1990s that he wanted to rebuild the Soviet empire. That was why he invaded Georgia, and why invaded and annexed Crimea. The West didn't believe him, because people like Obama projected their own motivations on Putin. He started to do, exactly what he said he would do.
Oh, and he evacuated his own family from Moscow, back when the current hostilities turned out to be lasting more than a few weeks.
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