DER KRIEG IN DER UKRAINE

Putin’s endgame: what to expect from Kremlin’s nuclear fear-mongering

You never know what awaits you tomorrow or even in an hour. The world is changing constantly, so do the minds of people. Every war is a cause to ask a basic question: what’s next? Nevertheless, we are witnessing the fact that history is not over yet, but it can be changed only with the desire of one person.
Vladimir Putin is considered to be the “reincarnation” of the Third Reich leader - Adolf Hitler. Somehow their tactics, rhetoric, and doctrines coincide. Putin is the kind of person who doesn’t know what it is like to lose. And when it comes to a massive defeat, he starts to feel stuck in the corner. However, he (exactly his person, not even the state) possesses a “big stick” that can lead the world to the endgame: nuclear warheads.
Russian soldiers came to Ukraine with one real goal: dying for the ambitions of a bunker guy. Denazification and demilitarization are claimed to be the minimum to reach. Russian propaganda uses various fake facts about the “development of nuclear and biological weapons” in Ukraine, which can be used against Russia. Recalling the comparison between the Third Reich and the Russian Federation, we must understand one specific thing: the first one couldn’t pose a nuclear threat to the international community. Nowadays, this threat is much more serious than it was even during the Cold War.

The despair of a dictator
Putin is losing consciousness. He had a plan relying on the intelligence data. Now he is in the condition of a Brownian movement, and the idea of world nuclear war seems for him to be more and more realistic. He understands that his regime is coming to its finish line, but he doesn’t want the world without him. Many medical conclusions prove that Putin’s health condition is getting worse. That’s one of the reasons why his ambitions can have not only catastrophic but annihilating implications. Ecologists state that a potential nuclear war and massive nuclear winter is a goodbye to all climate initiatives and climate as well. The reasons are manifold.

The Ukrainian Fiasco
The military march into Ukraine did not work out. Kyiv has become a severe bone in Russia's throat. As Putin is running out of conventional maneuvering options, he comes closer to making nuclear threats into reality. Putin thinks that the world betrayed him, that Russia is surrounded by traitors. And he is ruled by a simple but not pleasant affirmation: “Attacking is the best way of defending.” Nothing personal, just fictional history, enormous geopolitical interests, and a subjective vision of the world. Some sources claim that Putin has already recorded a video in which he “declares” a nuclear war. We may hope that the executors have some consciousness to stop it. However, propaganda is still zombifying lots of people, and they might consider this step as justified. The problem is that the Russian president is dragging his entourage into an abyss of madness.

Doomed clique
According to Kremlin sources, Putin’s clique is bound by fear and despair right now. As they have been cut off Western accounts and property, Russia's political, military, and business leaders have nothing to lose. They are obsessed with a super-idea, and the rest of the world has no means of redeeming itself from hostages other than to accept all the points of their ultimatum, that is, to capitulate.
Putin’s clique is done for, which makes them cluster together around the idea of a doomsday not only for them but for the whole world. They realize that nuclear retaliation from the West aims at the European part of Russia, whereas they can hide in the bunkers somewhere in Altai or Ural.

Nuclear readiness
Since 1999, tactical nuclear weapons have played a well-defined role in Russian military strategy as so-called "de-escalation" weapons. Such a strategy increases the likelihood of fear-mongering to use them during a conflict. Russia conducted tactical nuclear attack drills as part of the “Zapad” exercises. During previous drills in 2009 and 2013, the Russian army practiced an atomic strike against Warsaw.
Again and again, Russia's leadership reminded the West that it could destroy its major cities and industrial centers. Back in 2007, General Alexander Vladimirov spoke about the inevitability of war between Russia and the United States in the next 10-15 years.
In 2011, General Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, stated that he did not exclude that local and regional armed conflicts could escalate into a large-scale war, including nuclear weapons. What in 2011 was presented as a hypothetical possibility turned into outright threats in March 2014, during the annexation of Crimea, and is now almost an accomplished fact. The Kremlin warned that any attempted military intervention by Western forces would be met with a nuclear attack. On March 16, 2014, the day of the "referendum" on the annexation of Crimea, Dmitri Kiselev, a prominent Kremlin-backed broadcaster, claimed that Russia was the only country in the world capable of turning the United States into “a pile of radioactive ash”. Assault on Ukraine is yet another step of Russia’s spiraling towards a nuclear conflict.
In response to sanctions from the West, Putin ordered that Russian deterrence forces be placed on special alert at a meeting in the Kremlin with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov.
The President, the head of the Ministry of Defense, and the chief of the General Staff have nuclear suitcases in Russia. These three men have gathered to announce the strengthening of the deterrent forces. The keys to the nuclear suitcases are in the hands of the operating officers and it is enough to activate two of the three systems to start a nuclear war.
This chain of reaction will likely work. So it’s only a matter of time before Russia will launch nuclear weapons.
We can see the same resolve from Russian diplomats. Dmitry Polyansky, deputy permanent representative of Russia to the UN, considers possible the use of nuclear weapons in case of provocation by NATO.
If Putin wants to keep NATO out and believes he can destroy the Alliance, he will probably use tactical nuclear weapons. Probably he will use it not in Ukraine, but perhaps at military infrastructure or in some populated area in Poland. The most likely scenario is a low-yield nuclear strike against Warsaw, which Russia repeatedly practiced in its exercises.
Russian military doctrine dwells on the concept of a first strike, so if Moscow decides to do so and a response does not follow the attack, it will use nuclear weapons. We see that Russia is ready to turn to this tactic during such a major military conflict as the war in Ukraine to gain justification for such a monstrous move.
Putin must go all the way to the end. Because losing means returning Crimea and Donbas back to Ukraine. Therefore, Putin only needs a win. And what kind of win can there be if the whole world is against the Kremlin? Only a nuclear strike can turn the tide.
The problem is that a tactical strike on Europe risks spiraling down into the use of strategic nuclear warheads and full-scale nuclear conflict between the major nuclear states. The hypothetical logic of nuclear escalation is such that it will eventually lead to the total mutual destruction of everything.
We can see now that threats of nuclear weapons and such deviant behavior were not merely meant to provoke the Western alliance to test its nerve. They served as a rehearsal for an incident that could be used as a pretext for military action by Russia. Now aggression into Ukraine had been used as such a handy excuse.
The attack on Ukraine demonstrated that Russia had broken the old international consensus on the inviolability of borders. The situation has changed. People in Europe cannot sleep peacefully. Putin's propensity for unpredictable actions risks igniting a larger conflict in the heart of Europe that could lead to world war.
The Russian political leadership aims to dismantle Ukraine as a state at any cost, and the Kremlin is ready to launch tactical nuclear strikes on Europe to fend off Western support. Putin is prepared to pull the nuclear trigger. He is like a poker player who has lost his footing: after a series of successful rounds, he made a big bet, a blitzkrieg in Ukraine. But he’s lost. Now it's all in. And it is unlikely that anyone can stop this crazy bet.
Russia's fear-mongering will be a harsh lesson for us and our children. Every step that brought us closer to catastrophe will be studied. Unless, of course, the war escalates into a nuclear war, and there will be someone to study it.

On February 24, 2022, Russia and Belarus officially sent their troops to the territory of Ukraine. Several Ukrainian cities far outside the Donbass were subjected to numerous shellings: Kyiv, Gostomel, Sumy, Odessa and others.
Sanctions against Russia are restrictive political and economic measures imposed on the Russian Federation and a number of Russian individuals and organizations that are involved in the recognition of the independence of the DPR and LPR, as well as in the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine in 2022 as part of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The imposed sanctions include large-scale restrictions on the Russian financial system (including the Central Bank and major banks), the activities of a number of Russian companies and certain sectors of the economy, as well as the closure of airspace and seaports, personal sanctions against the Russian leadership, major entrepreneurs, and, in some cases, members of their families.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the United States, the European Union, and other countries, including China, introduced or significantly expanded sanctions to include Vladimir Putin and other government members, and cut off "selected Russian banks" from SWIFT, triggering the 2022 Russian financial crisis and massive international boycott of Russia and Belarus.