2023-05-03 13:35:00
But when can we speak of survival? An attack on Putin? A drone over the Kremlin?
Nothing reassuring. The former clandestine KGB agent recalls that the Russian nuclear doctrine, consolidated under the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, implies that nuclear weapons can be used in the event that the survival of the State is threatened. But when can we speak of survival? An attack on Putin? A drone over the Kremlin? Vyasteslav Volodin, Speaker of the Duma, the Russian National Assembly, did he not say that “Putin and Russia are one”? A legitimate question, although it should be remembered that the basis of deterrence, shared by all the nuclear powers, is precisely the uncertainty of the precise moment when a criterion applies.
Alone among the faithful
Sergueï Jirnov also believes that Russia compensates for the weakness of its conventional weapons by nuclear over-armament and that it is therefore not impossible that Russia, cornered, will end up using tactical nuclear weapons, even of limited power, on the spot. of battle. He worries regarding the rise of individuals “so dangerous and unpredictable” that are Evguéni Prigojine, the boss of the Wagner militia, and Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen President Republic. “They would use nuclear weapons, and without waiting”, he writes.
Sergei Jirnov, ex-KGB agent: “The moment I fear the most is the victory of the Ukrainians”
The author notes that early in the war in Ukraine Russian forces briefly took control of the former Chernobyl power plant, “powerful and terrifying symbol”, then the still active power plant in Zaporija, the largest in Europe. The latter has become “a weapon” in the hands of Putin. He can have it arrested at any time or blame the Ukrainian forces for any shell that falls nearby.
Putin certainly called on the Russian forces to “stand ready to carry out nuclear weapons tests”…but only in case the United States took the initiative.
Is Putin crazy? Can it drag us into a military escalation? Jirnov does not really answer the question, but analyzes the journey of a president who has gradually isolated himself, especially during the Covid pandemic, sees his aura wither and surrounds himself only with faithful. He attributes the president’s overconfidence during the Blitzkrieg on Kyiv to the fact that he was advised by the FSB, the domestic intelligence and counterintelligence service, and not by the military GRU and the intelligence SVR outside.
An almost reassuring speech
On the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, Sergei Jirnov expected a threatening speech from Putin before the Russian parliament. Instead, we got a “Brezhnevian spiel” one hour and forty-five minutes. Almost reassuring because Putin has certainly called on the Russian forces to “stand ready to carry out nuclear weapons tests”…but only in case the United States takes the initiative, which is not on the agenda.
The author’s conclusion is that Putin “lives in the past, but is already over. We just need a little more time for heads of state and experts of all kinds to understand this”.
→ The Escalade, by Sergei Jirnov, Albin Michel, May 2023, 213 pp., €20.90.
1683127175
#Sergei #Jirnov #exKGB #agent #Putin #lives #finished
