The West responded to Vladimir Putin's threats about using nuclear weapons with the language of force that is accessible and familiar to the pupil of the St. Petersburg gateway, which in this case will be eliminated. Now he is looking for new ways for a nuclear catastrophe.
Andrey Piontkovsky, a Russian political scientist and publicist, spoke about this in a commentary to Apostrophe.
According to him, Russia has been engaged in nuclear blackmail for 15 years, and Western countries were forced to lower themselves to the level of retaliatory threats. The head of the Kremlin understood this language and decided to resort to trickery - to arrange a nuclear catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with "Ukrainian" missiles.
"On the part of Great Britain and the United States - two nuclear states, guarantors of the territorial integrity of Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum - they literally explained to Putin both publicly and not in a publicly accessible and habitual language for a pupil of the St. Petersburg courtyard, that if nuclear weapons are used, in response to a strike, they will simply kill him. He understands such speech. And in terms of nuclear blackmail, he switched to the threat of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with "Ukrainian" missiles. That is, "I will arrange a nuclear catastrophe for you, but it's not me, but the Ukrainians". This is his last line of defense. I don’t know what answers he will offer to go beyond the red lines," the political scientist said.
He also said that Putin ultimately failed to agree on deploying nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus to attribute everything to Alexander Lukashenko. Now he plans to blow up the ZNPP allegedly "by the hands of Ukrainians."
“As soon as he was told that he would be personally killed for a nuclear attack, he began to look for ways to circumvent this threat. Remember, two months ago he called Lukashenko, and began asking to place nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus. Putin considered such an option that he could strike from there by placing warheads on Belarusian territory. And it's not his fault, but Lukashenko's. But they explained to him that this would not work either. Now he is thinking how to blow up the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, blaming it on the Ukrainians," Andrei Piontkovsky stressed.
