“Everyone knows that a third world war might only be nuclear, but I draw your attention to the fact that this is in the minds of Western politicians, not Russians,” the foreign minister warned Thursday. Russia, Sergei Lavrov. But the comment only adds to the concern three weeks following the same minister attributed the possibility of an invasion of Ukraine to the warmongering “hysteria” of the West.
Lavrov’s statement raises the question of what is Russia’s nuclear arsenal, its destructive power and who is the one that might eventually decide to launch an attack.
It is estimated that Russia is today the country with the largest number of atomic weapons, regarding 6,000 nuclear warheads. A reference regarding the power of that arsenal is that the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Little Boy, had a power of 15 kilotons, and any of the current warheads exceeds 1,000 kilotons.
That force would be enough to cause total destruction in a radius of 18 kilometers from the place of the explosion, severe destruction in 30 kilometers, serious damage in 50 kilometers and general damage up to 80 kilometers around.
Faced with this enormous destructive power, so far the five great powers that possess these weapons and are in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain and France, plus India, Pakistan and Israel, they only counted on them for a dissuasive purpose to discourage any attack once morest their country. Until now, no nation had threatened to use it once more, as the United States did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
But President Vladimir Putin indicated for the first time on Sunday that he had put his nuclear deterrent forces on alert.
Who then can activate the “nuclear button” in the Russian Federation?
In June 2020, the Kremlin approved a document that is more relevant today, called Basic principles of the state policy of the Russian Federation on nuclear deterrence. There it is established in what cases and in what way that option would be activated.
The text indicates that “state policy on nuclear deterrence is defensive”, so it would only work in response to a threat from another country, but a disturbing paragraph clarifies that “in the event of a military conflict, this policy [la de utilización de armas nucleares] provides for the prevention of an escalation of military actions and their completion under conditions that are acceptable to the Russian Federation.” It also clarifies that it is not necessary for the enemy to have the possibility of a nuclear response. It is enough that it possesses “offensive weapons (ballistic and cruise missiles, hypersonic aerial vehicles, attack unmanned aerial vehicles), directed energy weapons, anti-missile defense assets, early warning systems”.
As for who can push the “red button”, the decision to use nuclear weapons “is made by the president of the Russian Federation”. But in order to activate the encrypted codes of his nuclear briefcase or “cheguet” (in Russian), the head of state needs the other two briefcases that are in the possession of the defense minister and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They are the two who “directly plan and execute organizational and military measures in the field of nuclear deterrence.”
So in the Russian Federation the decision to launch a nuclear attack is taken jointly by the President and their military leaders.
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