01 October: "Russia forever" for one day
UKRAINE WAR TRUTH 213: “Russia forever” for one day
Annexation 2: On September 30, Vladimir Putin declared Donetsk – and Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – to be “Russia forever”. One day later, the strategic city of Lyman in the Donetsk region was captured by the Ukrainian army, reducing Putin's bombastic declaration to “Russia for one day”. Putin's big show in the Kremlin and on Red Square – far from advancing Russia's cause – made things much worse for the inept apprentice tsar. In his own distorted logic, Donetsk is Russia and now it turns out he cannot even defend Russia, although he can call the Ukrainians aggressors as they now occupy a piece of Russia.
The annexation of the four territories constituted a serious escalation of the war, but it certainly wasn't the last major escalation. The use of nuclear weapons was always understood to be a possibility of last resort, perhaps something you threaten with but don't actually contemplate using. This has more or less been the rhetoric of former Russian president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev. Enter stage left, Chechen “strongman” Ramzan Kadyrov. The most hawkish of the Russian hawks has now suggested the use of “low-yield” nuclear weapons on the Ukrainian battlefield. But “low-yield nuclear weapons” also break the nuclear taboo, disperse radiation over a certain area and set the stage to use higher-yield nuclear weapons to increase the effect of their use. Kadyrov's suggestion is not an empty threat, it is not bluffing, it is a practical proposal for a definite action on the battlefield. This is unacceptable and – I'll phrase this carefully – something should be done about it so that nobody else would dare to repeat such a proposal. Medvedev's comment was hypothetical – “if the existence of the Russian state is threatened” – while Kadyrov's is not. He is suggesting the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield now.
If Russia steps over the nuclear brink, it will be tainted forever as the country that brought the use of nuclear weapons into the 21st century, following in the footsteps of the country they denounce for having used them in August 1945. Putin's stupid claims of annexation have now led to Ukrainian troops annexing areas Russia considers to be Russian. Ukrainians commented that Putin was the first conquerer in history to annex territories his troops were retreating from. This dangerous game of annexations should stop. It's meaningless. All those areas were once part of the Soviet Union.