“Western threats”, escalation nightmare –

The hypothesis of a possible intervention by NATO forces in the war in Ukraine raised by French President Emmanuel Macron, the alarms of Western intelligence about imminent “violent sabotage” by Russia in Europe and, finally, Russia’s atomic maneuvers. New tensions emerge between Moscow and Western capitals. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the army to carry out nuclear weapons exercises involving the navy and troops based near Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Defense said this today, Monday 6 May: “During the exercise, a series of measures will be adopted to practice the preparation and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons”, reports an official note.

“During the exercise, a series of measures will be taken to train in the preparation and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons,” the ministry said in a statement where it added that the measure was taken “on the instructions of the commander in chief head of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”, Vladimir Putin. A move, according to Moscow, which aims to “maintain the readiness” of the army to protect the country, “in response to provocative statements and threats made against Russia by some Western officials”, added the ministry.

In October 2023, Russia announced that Putin had overseen the launch of ballistic missiles during military maneuvers aimed at simulating a “massive nuclear attack” in response to Moscow. During these exercises, an Iars intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia, and another Sineva ballistic missile from a submarine in the Barents Sea. Their decision was made public on the same day that the upper house of the Russian Parliament, the Federation Council, approved the revocation of ratification of the Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). Russia has deployed tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, its closest ally and European Union neighbor, in the summer of 2023. Russia’s nuclear doctrine calls for “strictly defensive” use of atomic weapons in the event of an attack on Russia with weapons of mass destruction or in the case of aggression with conventional weapons “threatening the very existence of the State”.