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September 24, 2022 15:25
With the Russian military suffering setbacks in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin threatened to use “every means” available, raising fears of a nuclear conflict for the first time since 1945.
US President Joe Biden set up a team of civilian and military specialists to assess risks and responses, warning Russia that nuclear war “cannot be won.”
Several experts and officials interviewed by AFP explain the possible scenarios.
What kind of attack would Putin launch?
“It is highly unlikely that Putin would use Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal capable of striking the United States and igniting a horrific nuclear war,” said James Cameron of the Oslo Nuclear Project.
But Russia, the world’s number one nuclear power, with a stockpile of regarding 4,500 nuclear warheads according to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), possesses “tactical” nuclear weapons less powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
The Russian president may decide to detonate one of these “small” nuclear weapons in Ukrainian airspace or in the Black Sea, according to the Russian nuclear “escalation and de-escalation” doctrine of using a light nuclear weapon first to gain advantage in the event of a conventional conflict with the West.
It might also target a sparsely populated area of Ukraine or a Ukrainian military installation, with the aim of intimidating the population and urging Ukraine to surrender, or even urging Westerners to persuade Ukraine to surrender.
What might prompt Putin to use nuclear weapons?
Putin emphasized that he might resort to nuclear weapons if Russia’s territorial integrity was threatened. He did not say whether that included Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, or the four Ukrainian regions that the Russian military has partly controlled since the offensive, where referendums are hastily organized to include them in Russia.
Mark Kansian, a former US Navy nuclear strategist, believes that this ambiguity means that the matter does not include the Donbass and Crimea.
Kansian, now an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that “there is no point in issuing a threat with such ambiguity if people are not sure whether they are really vulnerable or not.”
The US government has not observed any movement of nuclear weapons that would suggest preparation for such a strike.
“We haven’t seen anything that would change our position,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said Thursday.
– What will be the answer of the Westerners?
Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, the US government has been trying to avoid any escalation: NATO forces do not fight in Ukraine, and the weapons sent by Kyiv’s allies to Ukrainian forces are thought out to avoid using Western bombs to strike a target in Russian territory.
In the same context, the US administration has sent several private messages to Russian leaders over the past months to discourage them from using nuclear weapons.
But Washington must be firm, even if Moscow decides to conduct a limited strike in non-NATO Ukraine.
Source: agencies
