30 September: The deadly serious matter of the mushroom cloud
UKRAINE WAR TRUTH 212: The deadly serious matter of the mushroom cloud
Nuclear weapons 17: U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan referred to Putin's warnings that Russia might use nuclear weapons to defend the Ukrainian territories it has incorporated into the nation as “a matter that we have to take deadly seriously”. The problem is what are you “deadly seriously” going do about it? As things stand now, a cool and objective evaluation of the situation cannot but conclude that the nuclear threshold will be crossed in the near future, that is, that for the first time since 1945 a mushroom cloud will rise above a battleground, not a test site.
Why is this almost certainly unavoidable? Putin has incorporated the four Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk into Russia. The UN and what is usually called “the international community” do not agree and consider the annexation to be illegal. But in the nuclear scheme of things that is irrelevant. Putin has declared those territories to be part of Russia AND that an attack on Russia would be met by all means at the disposal of the state and that includes nuclear weapons. He also called on Ukraine to just surrender the territories to Russia and end the war. We also know that that is not going to happen. At present, the Ukrainian counteroffensive has a certain momentum with Russian troops surrounded in Lyman in the Donetsk region. Ukraine is not going to stop because Putin signs a scrap of paper. If the counteroffensive continues, Putin will likely reply with nuclear weapons.
Ukraine has formally applied to join NATO. The application will probably be processed with due haste and Putin might be tempted to use nuclear weapons before Ukraine formally joins NATO to prevent NATO invoking Article 5, declaring an attack on a NATO member state and a collective defensive response with all means to do so “on the table”.
Russia's annexation of four Ukrainian territories and Ukraine's fast-track application to join NATO membership brings the world to the very edge of the nuclear brink. Ukraine is not going to give up fighting to regain territories it considers theirs; Russia will now defend those territories with everything it got because Putin has painted himself into a corner; peace negotiations are impossible because Zelenskiy doesn't want to talk to Putin; and at some point in time, sooner or later, Russia is going to turn to its nuclear weapons. And then the U.S. and NATO will not know how to respond, or… overreact. It doesn't look good at all. It basically comes to this: Putin is telling the world to give him the four territories or face nuclear war.
But as tensions in Russia rise to unprecedented levels, a spark could ignite a prairie fire.