Cliff-Hanger : Rattling Nuclear-Tipped Spears

"If someone from the outside tries to intervene in what's happening, if they create threats,threats of a strategic nature, our retribution, our counter0strike will be instantaneous."

"We have all the necessary instruments, ones that no one else can boas of. And we will not be bragging about them, we will use them if necessary."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

"I don’t think [Putin] will [use nuclear weapons]."

"[Russia’s President has committed] massive strategic blunders. His so-called lightning invasion of Ukraine hasn’t gone too well."

"I don’t feel rattled by it. Because we have strong Armed Forces and a nuclear deterrent and we’re part of a NATO partnership of 30 nations who outgun him, outnumber him and have potentially all the capabilities at our disposal."

"I don’t fear him. I think we should be very grateful in this country that we have a nuclear deterrent, I think that is a really important part of his calculations."

"There are many, as we know, who wanted to get rid of it over the years."

"I’m very grateful that somewhere under the sea, some amazing men and women are deep underwater, hiding, waiting, in case Britain needs to be protected. That’s important."

U.K. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace

One of Britain's Trident nuclear submarines leaves on deterrent patrol from the Clyde Naval Base, Scotland

Sergei Lavrov, Kremlin spokesman had warned of the danger of nuclear confrontation: "We must not underestimate it". Who is talking nuclear to begin with? In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops surrounded Ukraine's civil nuclear power plants, including the decommissioned Soviet-era Chernobyl plant, risking rising radiation levels by their interference with the monitoring/tending Ukrainian nuclear-plant crew ensuring vigilance and safety.

 

The Russian-Ukraine conflict is fought with conventional weaponry, with the West and NATO countries supplying Ukraine with more up-to-date military hardware to equal the footing between the attacker and the attacked. With that assistance, along with the transfer of high-security intelligence, Ukraine's military has more than countered the Russian attack, and continues to do so. Enraging Vladimir Putin, inciting him to threats against any possible 'intervention' by NATO or its members.

 

That threat made initial oblique references to nuclear weapons, until Mr. Putin formally placed his nuclear defences on standby. Purely a self-protective device, to ensure that if any of his opponents nursed a measure of stupidity sufficient to unleash a nuclear device as a deterrent against further Russian advances and atrocities against Ukraine's civilians Russia would be obliged to counter-strike.

Knowing full well that no country other than his would deploy nuclear strikes, Vladimir Putin's ploy was sufficiently transparent to shock his adversaries at its sheer recklessness. Making it quite clear that nothing would detain a decision on his part to 'reciprocate' for any such move against Russia. As though anyone but himself would contemplate the use of such weapons. The threat of which is more than enough to convince his critics to take care and step back from the brink he has imposed.

In 1947, atomic scientists devised the Doomsday Clock, setting it at seven minutes to midnight in their assessment of the-then risk of atomic weapons once again seeing the light of day after the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, concluding World War II. That clock has been reset numerous times, forward -- never backward. It sits now at 100 seconds to midnight. Vladimir Putin has arrested the world's attention.

As Putin sees the conventional strength of his military wane under a situation he never imagined, with a surprise war of attrition causing him to lose an astonishing number of elite commanders and generals on the battlefield in Ukraine, along with the wreckage of armed personnel carriers, tanks, planes, helicopters and the Russian navy's pride, the Moskva to Ukrainian defence/offence tactics, he has become increasingly morose and vengeful.

Behind his pride in Russia's  projection of power with its nuclear weaponry, with the largest arsenal of nuclear devices of any country in the world, fantasizing pride, fear and admiration, he is obsessed with the belief of being advantaged over his adversaries. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's statement at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany at the first meeting of the Ukraine Defence Consultative Group where he urged allies to "Move heaven and earth" in stocking Ukraine with weapons, cannot have pleased Putin.

 

The aggression of the U.S. is not equally shared across NATO. European members find themselves too geographically close to Russia for comfort. They are also too dependent on Russian oil and gas to be comfortable about having their energy source cut off. Poland and Bulgaria have been. Germany, always uncomfortable at pressure from the U.S. and NATO to lift its reluctance to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons, foresees a recession in agreeing to stop importing Russian energy.

 

There are fears that Russia may contemplate a 'small' nuclear bomb on a Ukrainian city, as a crude coercion strike, forcing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into an immediate, unconditional surrender. That fear evokes pressure on the United States to transition from proxy war to direct involvement, to send troops into Ukraine. A decision on the part of the U.S. that would see push-back by other NATO members fearing repercussions.