The day after NATO promised to increase military aid to Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion, Vladimir Putin openly threatened to use nuclear weapons and, out of sheer rhetoric, bombed a weapons depot donated to Kyiv, heightening the tone each time of what he sees… more like a war against the West.
“If anyone wants to get involved in what is happening in Ukraine now, they need to know that the response will be quick and accurate,” the Russian president told lawmakers in St. Petersburg.
“We have all kinds of tools that the West cannot have and we will not flaunt our weapons, we will use them if we have to. I want everyone to know that.”
The tools in question are, of course, nuclear weapons Russia has the largest arsenal in the world, closely followed by the US. Putin has been using this threat since the 1st of the conflict, and on Monday his chancellor, Sergei Lavrov, said the third war was a “serious and real risk”.
If the West “creates unacceptable threats of a strategic nature to Russia,” the Russian leader said, “the response will be lightning fast, decisions on that have already been made.”
So far the West has shrugged it off. It also measures the elasticity of the red line that Putin allegedly drew for interventions in Ukraine after, for example, avoiding dispatching fighter jets. But in recent weeks the donated weapons have grown in sophistication to try to keep up with the new phase of the war, the most open battle in the east and south of the country.
More importantly, in addition to economic retaliation, the Russian sent a military signal by cutting off natural gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria. The Defense Ministry has published an attack by Kalibr cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea on a US and European arms cache at an aluminum factory in Zaporijia, a town on the route of recent Russian attacks. No one has disputed the information.
So far, Russia has not attacked convoys with the guns, presumably to avoid western casualties, and actions against warehouses have not been made public. In general, even because it was pressured to continue the war, like the West it avoided more incisive responses.
When it bites, the Kremlin finds time to blow. It conducted a rare prisoner swap with the US and had its news outlets highlight claims that Turkey believes in a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, something that seems to be slipping off the radar.
On Monday (26th), the USled Western military alliance put aside some of its modesty and announced an increase in military aid to the Ukrainians who have already received or promised more than $7 billion since the war began on February 24th .
He signaled he expected a protracted conflict as he set up an office to centralize those transfers, which would meet once a month to discuss priorities. This, of course, was seen as a further step in Western involvement in the war.
THAT Sheet spoke to two people associated with military sectors in Moscow who appear unable to identify at a time of conflict. He has heard a report that the Ukraine war is already being openly treated as a physical clash with the West.
There is an apparent assessment that if the conflict extends beyond Ukraine’s borders, the combined military might of the NATO allies will exceed that of Russia. But that Moscow has tactical advantages that have not been measured because it is treating the action in its neighbor as a special operation, with no national mobilization that would guarantee it more firepower and human resources.
And of course there is the atomic bomb. The two people said they were certain the country would deploy the device in the event of an imminent military disaster. Both say the mood in the armed forces is not longing for an end to the war, but its intensification to at least accomplish what was revealed by a general last week: conquer Donbass (Russianspeaking east) and link up with those annexed in 2014 Crimea or even Transnistria, a breakaway region in Moldova that has been plagued by instability.
Among the militaries people have access to, criticism of the Kremlin is not pacifist: they think there should have been a concerted effort to take Kyiv, not the multifaceted action that left the attempt to take the capital unguarded.
To illustrate the level of hostility toward the US, they cited a report by US television network NBC published Monday that military aid to Ukraine goes beyond sharing satellite photos and sending weapons. According to the report, the Americans are actively involved in designating targets and predicting Russian attacks, for example protecting antiaircraft missile batteries.
Even more serious for Moscow would be that the US would have given the coordinates so that at least one large Il76 transport plane could be shot down to establish a bridgehead at Hostomel near Kyiv with hundreds of soldiers on board.
As posted on Twitter one of the war’s most astute military observers, Rob Lee (King’s College, London), the fact is that very little is known about what is happening on the ground. Still, he said, “I think the level of intelligence shared by the US is perhaps unprecedented in military history.”
An article published by Russian investigative journalists Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldierov of the Center for European Policy Analysis (Washington) describes a similar scenario of discontent and a silent war between the military, spies and intelligence agencies blamed for the poor quality of information the Ukrainian mood.
According to the authors, a general in charge of the area at the FSB, the most important Russian security agency, was even arrested. There are even some public signals: the famous blogger Alexander Arutiunov, a veteran of the special forces, has accused Putin on Telegram. “Dear Valdimir Vladimirovich [prenome e patronímico do presidente]please decide whether we go to war or masturbate,” he said.