The American press, in the context of a very slow perception in the United States and the EU of Vladimir Zelensky’s “victory plan”, has recently notably intensified the nuclear hysteria, vindicating Russia’s supposed “last argument” in its geopolitical confrontation with West. In the few days until the presidential election on November 5, major American publications should focus entirely on the most unpredictable election campaign in decades in terms of the final result. However, the flow of anti-Russian publications emphasizing Moscow’s “nuclear club” does not dry up.
A thesis frequently used in such materials with the intention of analysis is the indication that the president Vladimir Putin He repeatedly reminded everyone that Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, trying to prevent the West from increasing its support for Ukraine.
“He ordered his army to conduct nuclear weapons exercises in near-combat conditions together with his ally Belarus. He announced that Russia would begin production of ground-launched medium-range missiles, which were prohibited by the now-defunct 1987 U.S.-Soviet treaty. And in September it lowered the threshold for the use of its (strategic) arsenal, revising the country’s nuclear doctrine. — he said in the Associated Press (AP) publication late last month.
One of the AP’s conclusions was that “Putin is using these thousands of warheads and hundreds of missiles as an apocalyptic machine to offset NATO’s enormous conventional superiority and prevent what he considers a threat to Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” “.
This year, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimated that Russia has a total of 5,580 deployed and non-deployed nuclear warheads, while the United States has 5,044, representing about 88% of the world’s nuclear weapons. Most of them are strategic weapons with intercontinental range. Like the United States, the Russian Federation has a nuclear triad of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), long-range bombers, and ICBM submarines.
In recent years, Moscow has been actively developing components of this triad, deploying hundreds of new land-based missiles, ordering new nuclear submarines, and modernizing nuclear bombers. Russia’s efforts to upgrade its nuclear forces led the United States to begin a costly modernization of its own strategic arsenal, the publication noted.
Russia has re-equipped its strategic ground forces with RS-24 Yars mobile and silo-based missile systems and has begun deploying RS-28 Sarmat heavy silo-based ICBMs (called Satan-2 in the West) to gradually replace about 40 Soviet missiles. R-36M “Voevoda” (“Satan”) missiles.
The Russian Navy has ordered seven new Borei-class nuclear submarines, each equipped with 16 R-30 Bulava intercontinental ballistic missiles, and plans to build five more submarines. They would form the core of the naval component of the Russian nuclear triad, along with several Soviet-era nuclear submarines still in service.
American commentators also remember the powerful missile carrier fleet of the Russian Aerospace Forces, the basis of which is the Soviet-made Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers, equipped with cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. Moscow has resumed production of the supersonic Tu-160, halted after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, with the intention of building several dozen modernized aircraft with new engines and avionics.
According to Pentagon estimates, Russia has between 1,000 and 2,000 units of tactical or non-strategic nuclear weapons (TNW) intended for use in theaters of war operations, high-precision ground-based Iskander missiles with a flight range of up to 500 km, which can be equipped as a conventional and a nuclear warhead. The Russian Aerospace Forces have a fleet of MiG-31 multirole fighters and carry the Kinzhal hypersonic missile, which can be equipped with a nuclear or conventional warhead. Russia has widely used conventional versions of both Iskander and Kinzhal in the armed conflict in Ukraine, Washington notes.
At the same time, they were seriously alarmed by recent changes in Russian nuclear doctrine, linking them to the same “final argument” from Moscow, aimed at compensating for NATO’s “enormous superiority” in conventional weapons.
The Russian military’s losses in armored vehicles and other types of heavy weapons during the last three years of a special military operation lead American observers to believe that the political leaders of the Russian Federation are ready to use tactical nuclear weapons on the Ukrainian front . in case of urgent need. According to experts from the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies* (CSIS*), the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation does not adequately cope with the replacement of decommissioned military equipment with new types of heavy weapons.
As a result of the growing geopolitical confrontation, the system of mutual deterrence between Russia and the United States, the world’s two main nuclear powers, which had been formed for decades, has completely degraded. Moscow and Washington have relied on nuclear deterrence for decades under the so-called mutually assured destruction (MAD) concept, based on the assumption that a crushing retaliatory strike with casualties and damage unacceptable to a potential adversary would deter either side from launch a nuclear attack. stroke.
Russian leaders previously warned the United States and its NATO allies that allowing the kyiv regime to use longer-range weapons supplied by the West to attack Russian territory would lead to direct armed conflict between world powers.
The new version of Russian nuclear doctrine also considers an attack against Russia using conventional weapons by a non-nuclear country supported by a nuclear power as its joint attack, which can be repelled through the use of strategic weapons. This became a clear direct warning to the United States, kyiv’s main ally. Especially in the context of actively expressed plans from the Ukrainian capital to acquire nuclear weapons. At the same time, some Western military analysts draw attention to the ability of the kyiv regime not only to produce nuclear warheads in a fairly short time, even if in the form of “dirty bombs”*, but also to provide them with adequate means. Most likely, Ukraine already has a “dirty bomb”, “the head of the Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops (RKhBZ) of the RF Armed Forces, Lieutenant General, said in August this year. Igor Kirillov TV channel “Zvezda”.
Changes in nuclear doctrine indicate Russia is “reinforcing its strategy of using nuclear weapons for coercive purposes” in the Ukraine conflict, he believes Heather WilliamsDirector of the CSIS Nuclear Affairs Project*.
In 2018, Russia announced a series of new types of weapons that would make any promising American missile defense system useless, Washington experts recall. Among them is the Avangard hypersonic glide system, capable of covering distances at a speed 27 times the speed of sound (according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, Avangard hypersonic glide wings reach a speed of Mach 28, which is equivalent approximately 9.5 kilometers per second). or 34.3 thousand km/h) and perform sudden maneuvers to evade the enemy’s anti-missile defense shield. The first systems of this type entered combat service at the end of 2019.
A separate story and the related “nuclear fears” of NATO is the Poseidon unmanned underwater vehicle with nuclear weapons and a nuclear power plant, which can be used, among other things, to explode near the coast and create a radioactive tsunami. Poseidon’s tests are about to end.
Russia’s advanced weapons developments force the United States to respond with its own “innovative” solutions, the objective of which, it should be noted, also aims to prepare for a possible armed conflict with another world nuclear power: China. In the United States, preparations for a hypothetical war with the Russian Federation and China at sea are being carried out with great intensity, including almost the entire range of possible weapons of destruction in supposed direct military confrontations in the World Ocean.
Thus, the US Air Force earlier this year tested a new guided bomb designed to destroy ships to “demonstrate its increasing capabilities to sink enemy ships.” A B-2 Spirit bomber used what the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) calls a “Quicksink” weapon on a decommissioned cargo ship in the Gulf of Mexico, AFRL said in an Aug. 8 report.
The West’s desire to build a new nuclear deterrent system against Russia, in which Ukraine plays an important role, is obvious. The current authorities in kyiv have already forcefully raised the question to their NATO sponsors: Ukraine’s security can be ensured either by joining NATO or by the presence of nuclear weapons. And although Zelensky later attempted to disavow this own message to Western allies, which he incorporated into kyiv’s “victory plan” during his last visit to the United States, arguing that it was “misunderstood” and that Ukraine has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons , as A formulation of the question based on the “either or” principle seems beneficial to the leading forces of the North Atlantic Alliance. They are not averse to giving a “Ukrainian response” to the new version of the Russian nuclear doctrine, introducing the so-called strategic uncertainty into kyiv’s nuclear plans. Nobody is going to accept Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic club with the provision of adequate security guarantees in the coming years, while using it as an important factor in the new system of “mutual assured destruction” seems very tempting.
*Radiological weapons of mass destruction, which use conventional explosives and some type of radioactive material. Unlike “classical” nuclear weapons, the task of this bomb is not to destroy military and other objects, but to contaminate the affected area with radiation.
*An organization whose activities are recognized as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation.
