In the war against Ukraine, the Russian Federation has only one advantage — readiness to use nuclear weapons. Political scientist Andriy Piontkovsky said this in an interview with the BBC.
According to a scientist who left Russia and now lives in Washington, Russia chose the path of de-escalation through nuclear escalation.
"One of the main tools of Putin's political pressure is nuclear blackmail. He hints that he might use nuclear weapons. His favorite formula is: "They will all die, and we will go to heaven," says Andriy Piontkovsky. — "He is ready to go to a nuclear exchange of blows, which will be inevitable. Russia will receive blows in return; there will be huge losses for the Russian population. Putin and Patrushev developed a nuclear strategy. Their strategy is de-escalation through nuclear escalation."
At the same time, the West is not ready to use nuclear weapons because it will cause the death of hundreds of thousands of people. For Putin, people are an instrument of his great battle with the "damned West", says the political scientist.
However, he notes, the rattling of nuclear weapons is combined with Russian propaganda. Even if Russia decides to implement its scenario, using nuclear weapons is not so easy.
"This is a metaphor - a nuclear button," Piontkovsky reassures readers. - "He does not have a nuclear button on his desk, which he will press and a nuclear war will begin. Using nuclear weapons is a very complex process involving dozens of people. First, the approval of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the Minister of Defense, and the Chief of the General Staff is necessary. Then the system of orders that follows the type of troops, and training. In the context of this war, all conversations are only about the hypothetical use of tactical nuclear weapons."
Tactical nuclear weapons are stored in warehouses. It has its own transportation system, and all these processes are controlled by foreign intelligence. "The Americans have so far stated clearly that they have not noticed evidence of the transfer of tactical nuclear weapons. Their data is accurate - you could see this at the time of the attack on Ukraine. That's why he won't be able to use tactical nuclear weapons," Piontkovsky thinks.
As he emphasized, Russian propaganda can also be compared in terms of danger with radiation. "It's like strong radiation. Skabeeva has 5 hours of broadcasting every day! "Television is a terrible force," says the political scientist.
As an example, he cited one of the narratives: Russian television "sells" the completely destroyed Mariupol as a victory for the Russian Federation.
"Listen to Russian TV shows, they bomb both London and the States," notes Piontkovsky. — I know the mood among the military in the Pentagon. There they dream that some fragment of a Russian bomb will fall on the territory of a NATO state. The military complains that the politicians are very restrained. If the Russian Federation strikes, they will have a free hand."
It will be recalled that two days before the start of the great war in Ukraine, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, began to convince the Russians that Ukraine was allegedly building up nuclear weapons against Russia. He drew such conclusions from the speech of President Volodymyr Zelensky at the security conference in Munich. Russian officials twisted the speech's points and began spreading them as threats to the Russian Federation.
