Cornered and Snarling Nuclear

"I believe that NATO would not directly interfere in the conflict even in this scenario [should Moscow strike Ukraine with nuclear weapons]."

"The demagogues across the ocean and in Europe are not going to die in a nuclear apocalypse [by striking Russia and risking a nuclear war]."

Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian President/Prime Minister, currently deputy chairman, Russian Security Council

Russian nuclear weapon Topol-M near the Kremlin    Getty Images

 

Dmitry Medvedev is Vladimir Putin's man. Infamously when Mr. Putin had exhausted his then-constitutional two-terms in office, Medvedev obligingly played musical chairs with Mr. Putin, taking on the presidency while Putin was demoted to the Prime Ministership (manipulating the presidency through Medvedev), creating a temporary break from the presidency for Putin, enabling the exchange, once the term had expired to reverse, with Putin returning to the presidency. At which time he adroitly managed to alter the constitution effectively granting him the presidency in perpetuity.

Mr. Medvedev remains devoted to Mr. Putin's Russia, parroting the very same lines that his president gravely intones in expressing the 'no-choice' situation of Ukraine's very existence posing an existential threat to the Russian Federation through the Machiavellian evil of Ukraine's neo-Nazi government. A government so steeped in fascism that it has the temerity to fight back against the Kremlin's 'special military invasion' that isn't a war unless that kind of nomenclature is worth a 15-year jail term.

Through Mr. Medvedev, obediently responding to his guide and mentor's instructions, the world is on notice once again that, sufficiently shoved against a wall, Russia viz-a-viz a presidential decree is prepar3ed to go nuclear in and on Ukraine. In effect, countering both the Ukrainian military's hugely successful counteroffensive in the east and northeast of Ukraine, and the efforts of the West, NATO nations and the United States to shore up Ukraine's resolve in the supply of technologically advanced weaponry to match and outmatch Russia's.

Vladimir Putin is spittin' mad and he isn't going to take it any more. An ungrateful world condemns his war crimes in Ukraine, promising that in the end there will be a payment in kind for such evil, while in very fact, Russia is sacrificing itself for the greater good of humanity in taming a fascist serpent it has identified as Ukraine. So far, Russia's pay-back of cutting gas supplies to Europe has failed to temper the EU's sanctions.

But then, Russia has its fall-back position of nuclear strikes, but not necessarily nuclear strikes. Unless they do indeed become necessary and that decision will be left to Putin's discretion. He is wavering, just as his troops are receding under the dominating blowback of the Ukrainian military. Which, without the West-supplied weapons would be an entirely spent force. Some take the none-too-veiled threats that have erupted on occasion of its readiness to use its nuclear arsenal seriously, while other analysts fail to.

Their interpretation is that this is a warning device meant to deter Ukraine and the West from their adamant defence of a sovereign nation overrun by a savage occupation known to have committed and to continue to commit war crimes. The use of tactical nuclear weapons in defence of Russia's determination to defend the dignity of its irredentist strategy intended to pave the way for a resumption of Russia's former status in conquest of its Soviet satellites, a mere ploy to ensure the West and Ukraine pull back sensibly.

The strategy behind the recently-concluded vote in the four regions of Ukraine that Russia means to annex, is to demonstrate to the world that the population of those contested regions, the Industrial heartland of Ukraine, is eager to join Russia and leave Ukraine. So that once the formal declaration of sovereignty is made, Moscow will be entirely justified in using nuclear strikes in response to Ukraine's military continuing to strike at territory that Moscow considers its own.