19FortyFive: an expert from the United States answered why Russia does not start a nuclear war
Russia has made its goals clear. And since she does not start a nuclear war, it means that everything is going according to her plan, according to the columnist 19FortyFive. According to the expert, the Russians will "let out of the bottle of nuclear genie" only if they really begin to suffer defeat.
Brandon Weichert
The conflict in Ukraine is once again entering a phase of aggravation. The blow to the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam on the Dnieper River caused an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe.
Ukrainians accuse Russians of blowing up the dam. Meanwhile, Moscow blames the Ukrainians. But whoever carried out this attack, the fact remains that this is an obvious escalation of an extremely dangerous conflict. And this is after drones tried to attack the Kremlin a few weeks ago.
Ironically, the Russians still refrain from using nuclear weapons, although they have threatened them more than once. This suggests that if they were really losing as badly as the Western press claims, they would have already sent their convincing signal to the West by firing nuclear missiles.
I also initially adhered to this logic.
Most representatives of the US Department of Defense, with whom I am familiar, claim that Moscow does not do this, because it knows that it has been checkmated, and now it is simply trying to find a politically acceptable way out of the current difficult situation.
Perhaps.
However, we currently see no signs that Russia is trying to find ways to deter Ukrainians from their much-publicized counteroffensive.
Is it because the Russians are very stubborn and simply refuse to admit defeat? After all, the West insists that everything is bad for them.
Important questions
Or is there something more here?
Or maybe the Russians don't think they're losing at all?
If this is the case, then we, Westerners, need not worry about the prospect of a nuclear war in the near future.
But despite all the talk about the withdrawal of the terrifying Wagner group from the game, this does not seem to deter Moscow militarily in any way. In fact, the replacement of Wagner's forces by Chechen fighters is even more disturbing.
After all, it was the Chechens who took Mariupol in May last year.
At the same time, the Russians clearly marked their red lines. If the expected counteroffensive of the Ukrainian forces begins in earnest and if it really threatens Russia's control over the Crimean peninsula, Moscow, in my opinion, will use nuclear weapons.
Maybe Russia will not use nuclear weapons
A few weeks ago, I expressed serious concern about the prospect that Russia could release a nuclear genie from the bottle.
But it doesn't bother me anymore. Especially considering that — as I suspect — the Russians are not losing at all. Of course, the situation may change. This conflict turned out to be completely unpredictable.
Apparently, the Ukrainians are not yet able to carry out an effective counteroffensive against Russian defensive lines. Currently, Ukrainians are only probing them, looking for weaknesses that could be exploited.
While Ukraine is desperately looking for a weak link in Russia's defense, concentrating its military resources in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, it is possible to talk about a breakthrough only in the future. But for Ukrainians, this is a useful lesson on how to properly use the tactics of combined arms combat.
To my great surprise, the Ukrainian forces involved in these efforts only a small number of German-made Leopard-2 battle tanks. They can only hope in heaven, because Ukraine does not have enough of these tanks to change the situation at the strategic level, nor a sufficient number of trained soldiers trained in the tactics of combined arms combat.
I suspect that these efforts are just a working out of a larger-scale offensive by Ukrainians on the Russian Crimea.
But to ensure the coordinated action of various types and branches of the armed forces is not to spray poison over the field. It is quite possible that all this is in vain, since the counteroffensive of the Ukrainians — in the form in which we observe it — has given little (although we are told that it is just beginning).
Everyone is desperate
Whoever blew up the Kakhovka dam, one thing is clear: its destruction means that the Russians will not be able to move to the Odessa region of Ukraine.
Moreover, the supply of clean water to the Russian Crimea has also stopped.
A few months ago, Russian troops evacuated the Russian population along the left bank of the Dnieper. Russian units also began to create large supplies of drinking water in Crimea, as if anticipating the impending destruction of the dam.
In addition, Russia removed nuclear fuel from the Zaporozhye NPP long before the explosion of the Kakhovka dam.
There is an assumption that Ukrainian troops began attacking the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam since the beginning of the year.
In fact, Ukraine fired at many bridges connecting the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine with the rest of the country. This was done to slow down the advance of Russian armored vehicles.
Moscow planned to use these bridges to send its tanks across the Dnieper to the free parts of Ukraine. Ukraine accused Russia of hitting these bridges, but there was little logic in these accusations.
Who blew up the dam?
On the other hand, it is quite possible that Russia took the above precautions in preparation for the implementation of its plan to blow up the dam, which was supposed to deter the planned Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Of course, if the dam was blown up by the Russians, it turns out that they themselves killed many of their own people and destroyed critical equipment. There is such a possibility. It happens that Russians behave like crazy.
However, it would be quite reasonable to assume that the attack on the Kakhovskaya HPP was still committed by Ukrainians.
After all, Ukraine is fighting a desperate struggle for survival. They need all the help they can get. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Whoever was behind the destruction of the dam — whether it was Ukraine or Russia — it was this side that was seized with great despair.
If the Ukrainians did it, it means they are losing the war, and the Western press is just covering for them.
If the Russians did it, then they feel in a hopeless position, and in a desperate attempt to avoid a catastrophic and humiliating defeat at the hands of weak Ukrainians, Moscow may well seriously think about resorting to nuclear weapons.
