Washington believes it has de-escalated tension with the Kremlin and sees no indication Putin is preparing such an attack
Uncle Sam listens and Vladimir Putin knows. In case the former KGB director escapes notice, the New York Times newspaper leaked on Wednesday that US intelligence recorded alarming conversations between Russian generals in mid-October about where and how they would deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
President Putin did not participate in the conversation, which also reflected the frustration of the military commanders over the setbacks they had to endure on the battlefield. The mere fact that they occurred alarmed the Joe Biden administration as it understood that Putin’s veiled threats were not just words. At least their military takes them seriously. “He’s not kidding,” Biden told Democratic donors on Oct. 6 at a fundraising dinner in New York.
The conversations intercepted by US intelligence also took place at a time when Russia denounced that Ukraine was preparing an attack with a “dirty bomb”, a conventional weapon loaded with radioactive waste. Washington interpreted that it could lay the groundwork for using it as an excuse, as Ukraine vehemently denies it.
European leaders were quick to criticize Biden for being seditious to warn of the threat, as they did last December and January when he warned of the impending invasion of Ukraine. “We must be careful when we comment on these matters,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.
The New York newspaper clarifies that the Pentagon has seen no indication that Russia is preparing for this type of attack, which would be the world’s first in more than 75 years since the US used atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II. world war. Putin has raised the specter of nuclear weapons since the invasion of Ukraine got off to a bad start in February. The last, at the end of September, when the Ukrainian government’s offensive lost ground.
So does the White House, and many observers think that the more cornered it is, the greater the risk of the nuclear threat. In fact, the New York Times sources believe that the high-level talks involving the U.S. government with its Russian counterpart have allowed tensions to be eased, although they did not serve the purpose of a ceasefire. to promote firing that was pursued Those talks included two talks between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu.
Evidence of the impact they had is that Putin himself denied in a speech last Thursday that he is preparing the use of nuclear weapons. “We don’t think that’s necessary,” he says. “It makes no sense, politically or militarily.” And he agrees with Biden on that. The US president told Democratic donors that he cannot think of any possibility that the use of nuclear weapons will not end in ‘Armageddon’.
Privately, the White House has said it has no plans to respond to that potential threat with any other nuclear device. The defense secretary has promised not to let the situation escalate to an apocalyptic level. “I’m the guy who would give the boss the recommendations on what to do, so I’ll make sure they’re credible answers that achieve what we want in effective terms,” he said at a news conference last Thursday.
The answer would also depend on the type of attack, as the use of tactical nuclear weapons implies a shorter range than the warheads used for intercontinental ballistic missiles. The size of the weapon and even the wind would be decisive, but all experts agree that any small nuclear explosion could cause thousands of deaths and especially turn parts of Ukraine into uninhabitable zones.
William Alberque, director of Strategy, Technology and Weapons Control at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, doesn’t believe Putin means it because if he were, “he would have used them by now,” he said in an op-ed. In his view, Russia uses them as a deterrent to prevent NATO from directly intervening in the conflict and to intimidate its European partners who, like the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, see it as blackmail in which they are involved. not going to fall.
Source: La Verdad
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