Putin's Nuclear Crisis - December 2021
Russia's Foreign Ministry presented two comprehensive draft agreements on security guarantees between Russia, the United States and the NATO alliance on 17 December 2021. The two documents were written in the language of ultimatum, and seemed designed to be rejected. There was initially some ambiguity as to the Russian course of action when the ultimatum was rejected. Possibly this would entail a conventional ground forces offensive in Ukraine. Probablly this would include forward deployment of intermediate range missiles to Kaliningrad - a reprise of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
"The Parties shall refrain from deploying their armed forces and armaments, including in the framework of international organisations, military alliances or coalitions, in areas where such deployment could be perceived by the other Party as a threat to national security, with the exception of such deployment within the national territories of the Parties," the document says. "The United States of America shall undertake to prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and deny accession to the Alliance to the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," the document adds. Such a commitment would impact Ukraine and Georgia, which have advanced security cooperation agreements with the US and NATO, and possibly the states of Central Asia, which have engaged in military cooperation with the US and hosted US bases in past decades.
The proposal further requires Russia and members of NATO as of 1997, before the bloc began its post-Cold War eastward expansion, not deploy troops and weapons to other European countries. The Russian security proposals also include a commitment by Russia and the US not to deploy ground-based missiles which were banned under the now-defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty "outside their national territories, as well as in areas of their national territories from which such weapons can attack targets in the national territory of the other Party".
Russia will engage in creating counter threats if NATO turns down the Russian proposals for security guarantees, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said 18 December 2021. "We are making clear that we are ready to talk about switching over from a military or a military-technical scenario to a political process" that will strengthen the security of all countries in the area of the OCSE, Euro-Atlantic and Eurasia, he said. "If that doesn’t work out, we signaled to them (NATO-TASS) that will also move over to creating counter threats, but it will then be too late to ask us why we made these decisions and why we deployed these systems." The Europeans must think about the prospect of turning the continent into a filed of military confrontation, he said.
Russia released draft agreements titled the Treaty Between the US and Russia on Security Guarantees and On Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation and Member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The proposals were handed over to a US representative at a meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry on December 15.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called on NATO to start substantive talks to give Russia reliable and long-term security guarantees. The guarantees will need to be legally binding because, Putin said, the West had walked back on their previous verbal commitments.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that hopes for a deal with Washington to limit NATO expansion in Eastern Europe are slim, arguing that even a signed agreement could be torn up by the American side at a moment’s notice. In a speech to his country’s most senior military officers on 21 December 2021, Putin said he no longer viewed the West as a dependable partner. Russia has been seeking written assurances about the presence of US troops and hardware near its borders, he said, but even those assurances could not be depended on.
“We need long-term legally binding guarantees. But you and I know them well. And that is something that cannot be trusted,” Putin went on, noting that the US “easily withdraws from international treaties that it becomes uninterested in,” apparently referencing Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the landmark Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. The accord, inked between the USSR and US in 1972, intended to limit both sides’ missile defense capabilities. “You and I both know very well: under various pretexts, including the purpose of ensuring their own security, that they act thousands of kilometers away from their national territory,” he said.
At the expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry board, Putin said "They [the US] simply do what they want. But what they are doing on the territory of Ukraine now, or trying to do and going to do — this is not thousands of kilometers away from our national border. This is at the doorstep of our home. They must understand that we simply have nowhere to retreat further".
"We have specialists here, we are in constant contact with them. There is no hypersonic weapon in the United States yet, but we know when it will appear — they cannot hide it, everything is recorded, the tests are being conducted, successfully or unsuccessfully. So we approximately understand when it will happen," the President added.
Putin also believes that if the US deploys its weapons in Ukraine, it may try under the cover of these weapons to push Kiev to attack Crimea. "They will put hypersonic weapons in Ukraine, and then, under their cover <...> they will arm and push extremists from the neighboring state against Russia, including into certain regions of the Russian Federation, for example, Crimea, under advantageous circumstances as they believe," the head of state went on. "Do they think we don’t see these threats? Or do they think that we are so weak-willed to simply look blanky at the threats posed to Russia? That is the problem: we simply have nowhere to move further, that’s the question," Putin said.
Dmitry Kiselev, the director general of the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, said on 20 December 2021 that the tense situation around Ukraine has the potential of escalating into a new Cuban missile crisis if the West fails to provide Russia with the security guarantees it has requested. In an interview with the BBC, Kiselev said that if Ukraine joins NATO or the alliance decides to advance its military infrastructure in Ukraine, Moscow "will hold a gun to America's head."
"Russia has the best weapons in the world – hypersonic ones. They'd reach America as fast as US or British weapons could reach Moscow from Ukraine. It would be the Cuban missile crisis all over again, but with a shorter flight time for the missiles," Kiselev told the media. When asked if Russia is ready "to use force to defend its red lines", Kiselev said "One hundred percent, because for Russia this is a question of life or death".
"Countries are either lucky or they're unlucky to be next to Russia. That's the historical reality. They can't change that. It's the same as Mexico. It's either lucky or not to be close to America… It would be good to harmonise our interests and not put Russia in a position where missiles could reach us in four minutes", Kiselev said. In the event of NATO failing to reach a consensus with Russia, Moscow is ready to "create a comparable, analogous threat by deploying its weapons close to decision-making centres", he noted.
The West is unlikely to accept Russia’s demands because doing so would be politically impossible. Under the documents, NATO cannot conduct military activities close to Russian borders, while Russia had the right to do what it sees fit on parts of its territory that border NATO. From the US and NATO’s perspective, that would mean capitulating to Moscow, which is politically unacceptable. Moreover, Washington and the EU countries see no reason why they should agree to overhaul the post-Cold War European security system.
The top Republican on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the security proposals that Moscow has put forth in response to Western alarm over a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine are a clear sign that Russia is “trying to create a pretext for war.” U.S. Senator Jim Risch (Republican-Idaho) said in a statement on December 18 that Russia’s proposals are not security agreements, but a list of concessions the United States and NATO must make to appease Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The Russian Federation made these demands with the full understanding they are impossible to accept. These demands are contrary to not only the principles and spirit of the NATO treaty, but also the specific text of the agreement adopted by all 30 sovereign NATO countries. Russia is clearly trying to create a pretext for war. Putin knows the United States and our 29 NATO allies do not, and will not, negotiate away the future of sovereign nations, like Ukraine, that must be able to make their own choices."
"I find the West’s reaction to be somewhat surprising. On the one hand, they expect everything from Russia, but on the other, they are astonished to hear Russia use such harsh rhetoric. The sharp tone indicates that the time when Russia acted from a position of weakness and defense is over," Editor-in-Chief of the Russia in Global Affairs magazine Fyodor Lukyanov told Izvestia.
Putin ordered two nuclear-capable long-range bombers to the Belarusian border.
Russia sent a pair of nuclear-capable long-range bombers over the skies of Belarus for patrolling on 18 December 2021. Reports said the mission, the third in a month, was intended to underline close defense ties between the two allies amid tensions with the West. A month earlier, the Russian defence ministry released video on 12 Noember 2021 of strategic bombers flying escorted by Belarusian jets. After the two Russian Tu-160 planes rehearsed bombing runs in a training exercise, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko had said he needed Russian nuclear-capable bombers to help him navigate a migrant crisis at the Poland-Belarus border. It was the second day running that Russia had sent strategic bomber planes to overfly Belarus in a show of support for its close ally Minsk.
Three U.S. B-52 strategic bombers completed a training flight in Ukrainian airspace on 04 September 2021. The mission was the first-ever of its kind. The bombers are based in the U.S. state of North Dakota but are part of a deployment of six B-52s to a Royal Air Force base in Fairford, England. More than 200 related missions had been conducted since the Bomber Task Force launched operations in the European theater two years ago. These ongoing bomber missions showcase the U.S. Air Force’s ability to continually execute flying missions, sustain readiness and support Allies and partners across Europe
Russia warned that it would redeploy medium-range nuclear weapons on the Western flank — in striking distance from central Europe — for the first time since they were banned in a 1987 agreement between presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. In February 2018 Russia claimed the right to put weapons anywhere it chose on its own territory after reports that the country had deployed nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad drew criticism from its neighbors and NATO. Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, and the missiles would be able to reach large parts of NATO members Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
The Russian Institute for Standardization published GOST R 42.7.01-2021 "Urgent burial of corpses in time of war and peacetime" developed by the Federal State Budgetary Institution "All-Russian Research Institute for Civil Defense and Emergencies EMERCOM of Russia". It stated "Burial of the deceased with a high radioactive background. allowed on a specially designated area of ??the burial site in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation, which regulates relations related to ensuring the radiation safety of the population."
On 18 December 2021, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko spoke with pro-Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Soloviev, who wore a crimson hoodie with a Soviet hammer and sickle emblem, about Putin’s ultimatum to the United States and NATO. In an circumstance of Soloviev’s display entitled “The Capitulation of NATO,” Grushko stated: “The moment of truth has come. We have reached a red line and our proposals aim to move us away from that red line and initiate normal dialogue that will put security interests first.”
Leonid Gozman wrote in Echo of Moscow on 19 December 2021 that "This is not just an ultimatum. This is a demand for complete and unconditional surrender. Russia has no political, economic or military resources to provide such an ultimatum. Russia does not offer any steps on its part - the West must admit that we have always been and remain right in everything, and admit defeat. All this pre-war hysteria does not even have anything like casus belly - no one killed the Archduke and no one from the West threatens us. We have no territorial claims, no one from the outside is trying to interfere with what is happening inside us. All this is from scratch!... There are probably people in the leadership of Russia who understand that this ultimatum cannot be accepted. This means that they have some kind of plan, ranging from nuclear war to the complete closure of the country and turning it into a large military (concentration) camp."
Gilbert Doctorow wrote: "If accepted in their present form, these treaties would represent a total capitulation by the United States over everything four successive administrations have tried to achieve to contain Russia and put it in a small cage at the periphery of Europe. The demands are so stunning in scope that we must ask why Russia is taking the seemingly enormous risk of advancing them, and doing so publicly. Moreover, why now? I have two explanations to advance: the first is the unshakable confidence that Vladimir Putin and his colleagues have in their present tactical advantage over the United States in the European theater of operations and strategic advantage over the United States on American home territory if push comes to shove.... the Russians are using the Chinese backing to scare the hell out of Washington, which might well assume that the Chinese will coordinate their own military actions against Taiwan, against the U.S. naval forces in the South China Sea and beyond to present the United States with an unwinnable two-front war while serving their own, Chinese, interests."
On 19 December 2021, News of the Week presenter Dmitry Kiselyov introduced: “Russia… prepared and handed over to the Americans written proposals on strategic stability or, more simply, the prevention of nuclear war, because we are already at a critical point, to be honest… It is very simple. The USA and NATO must withdraw from our borders, otherwise we will figuratively “gather” on their borders and create symmetrical, unacceptable dangers… If you place a gun to our heads, we are going to retort in kindly. The all level is that the evolution of Ukrainian territory, [Western] The bloc is not only Ukraine’s industry. This is the entire disruption of the worldwide equilibrium, which poses an existential risk to Russia. In different phrases, it’s a signify of life and dying for Russia… We are not going to permit this, no signify what it costs us....”
Notorious for his earlier assertion that Russia was the one nation able to decreasing the United States to a pile of radioactive ash, Kiselyov reconsidered his beloved “argument” to elucidate why the United States would breathe prepared to simply accept Putin’s implausible proffer. He claimed that Russia is able to endure any penalties and to stopgap to any means to get what it needs: “No one has published the texts of the proposed agreements before. But never before in the 21st century have the risks been so serious and the risks so great. Non-standard situations require non-standard approaches. Second, we hold very strong cards in our hands. Our hypersonic weapons are guaranteed to produce a reaction that is very unpleasant for America to hear: being reduced to radioactive ash.”
In the past years, Russian lawmakers, advocating the deployment of Russia’s advanced weapons systems in Cuba, Central America and elsewhere in the “coronary heart of the Americas”. These options will probably remain on Moscow’s menu. “We are considering deploying our nuclear weapons in Cuba or Venezuela,” state television presenter Olga Skabeeva said on 21 December 2021.
Rumors on state TV funded by the Kremlin were getting a stronger sense of urgency around Russian President Vladimir Putin’s NATO “ultimatum”. State TV presenter Olga Skabeeva on 60 minutes stated on 21 December 2021: “The anxiety level has reached its maximum. It’s 20 days before the ultimatum expires and the stakes are rising, although it looks like it can’t be higher.”
On 21 December 2021 Putin set out what he saw as the country’s main defense priorities in a speech to top military chiefs in Moscow in which he displayed frustration with NATO. He warned about the prospect of the US-led military bloc’s hardware appearing on Ukrainian territory, arguing that if Western missile systems are deployed there, “their flight time to Moscow will be reduced to 7-10 minutes, and if hypersonic weapons are deployed – to just five.”
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu also took the floor following Putin’s speech to allege that US private military companies are preparing a chemical weapons “provocation” in eastern Ukraine. He claimed that containers with “unidentified chemical components” have been delivered to the cities of Avdeevka and Krasny Liman in the Donbass. However, the minister provided no further details or evidence of the chemical attacks that had purportedly been planned.
The seventeenth big press conference of Vladimir Putin on 23 December 2021 turned out to be intense and intense: fifty-five questions in four hours. The president saw in the current actions of the West preparations for a "third military operation" in southeastern Ukraine. "Now we are told "war, war, war." How is Russia supposed to live with this, all the time with an eye on it, when they fuck it up?" And Moscow will have to act, although "this is not our choice."
Vladimir Putin's reasoning could be described by the "strategic depth" concept, the distances between the front lines or battle sectors and the country's industrial core areas, capital cities, or other key centres of population. In his annual press conference in December 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin explained that if the US and NATO missile systems appear in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow would amount to 7 - 8 minutes; it would take just 4 - 5 minutes for a hypersonic missile to reach Russia's capital from the Eastern European state. The US and its NATO allies have pinned Russia into a position from which it has nowhere to fall back to, Putin stressed. The strategic depth of Russian space had saved the country in the invasions of Napoleon and Hitler.
The United States and Western countries should immediately impose sanctions on Russia to prevent its "extortionate demands" and force it to make concessions, former State Department special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volcker wrote 26 December 2021 in an article on the website of the Center for European Policy Analysis. Until now, he said, Washington and its allies have imposed economic restrictions on Moscow only after it "did something bad." Volcker said "The trend should change - the West should introduce new sanctions right now and agree to lift them only if Russia refuses military escalation".
The United States will cease its presence in Ukraine after the press conference by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ilya Kiva, a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada from the Opposition Platform - For Life party , said 26 December 2021. According to the parliamentarian, the Russian leader "made it clear" to Washington that Moscow will not tolerate Western provocations on the territory of the former Soviet republic and will suppress them. "The ultimatum has been set, we are waiting for a response from the West. Personally, I am sure that the Yankees will soon begin to curtail their presence and activities on the territory of Ukraine." The deputy recalled the hasty retreat of NATO forces from Afghanistan, accompanied by the fall of the country's pro-Western government, and concluded that Ukraine would face the same development of events.
The North Atlantic Alliance is preparing for a large-scale armed conflict with Russia, said Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin at a 27 December 2021 briefing for military attachés and representatives of foreign embassies accredited in Moscow. "The military construction of the bloc has been completely redirected to prepare for a large-scale, high-intensity armed conflict with Russia," Fomin said. According to him, in NATO doctrinal documents of recent years, for example, in the NATO military strategy of 2019, the Russian Federation is directly, "without any equivalents identified as the main source of threats to coalition security."
"Recently, the alliance has switched to the practice of direct provocations, fraught with a high risk of escalating into an armed confrontation," Fomin said on Monday at a briefing for military attachés and representatives of foreign embassies accredited in Moscow. As a typical example, he cited the attempt of the British destroyer HMS Defender on June 23, 2021, to penetrate the territorial waters of the Russian Federation in the area of Cape Fiolent off the coast of Crimea. "It is significant that the actions of the British Navy ship were provided by the American strategic reconnaissance aircraft RC-135," Fomin said. According to him, in the Black Sea region, in comparison with 2020, the intensity of the use of reconnaissance aircraft has increased by more than 60 percent. The number of sorties increased from 436 to 710.
"Every year, the NATO bloc conducts 30 major exercises, during which scenarios for conducting military operations against Russia are being worked out. Within the framework of combat training events, special attention is paid to the creation of strike groups near the borders of our country. In particular, a series of Defender exercises were held in May-June of this year. Europe 2021 with the transfer from the United States of America and Western Europe to the eastern flank of reinforcement troops of up to 40 thousand people, "Fomin said.
Amid those tensions between Washington and Moscow, the U.S. vice president Kamala Harris has warned Russia of unprecedented sanctions. In an interview with CBS on 26 December 2021, Harris said Russia could see sanctions not seen before should it invade Ukraine. Harris added that the U.S. is working with allies to stand up for Ukraine's territorial integrity. This comes amid Russia's military buildup on the Ukrainian border. Harris declined to talk about specific sanctions, but said the U.S. is having direct conversations with Russia.
Unlike Moscow, Washington has been exhibiting a dangerous tendency towards simplifying the circumstances for the possible use of nuclear weapons, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov noted in an interview published in the International Affairs journal on 27 December 2021. "We in Moscow are committed to raising the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. An opposite trend has been seen in the United States over the recent years, with the means for nuclear destruction appearing to be perceived more and more as a battlefield weapon. This is a dangerous trend," the senior Russian diplomat stressed.
This view of the use of nuclear potential undermines strategic stability, Ryabkov specified. "I believe that we are close to a point, beyond which diplomacy would play a subordinate role, despite all of its skills. Today, as it seems to me, political and diplomatic tools should be used first and foremost to settle this situation. And we outlined [in the Russia-proposed security guarantees] how to settle it. We urge that this issue should be taken seriously," the high-ranking Russian diplomat said. What was known as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 must not recur in the way it took place, Ryabkov emphasized.
Andrei Shitov, a columnist for TASS, wrote 27 December 2021 that "The threat of war appears to the Americans and their NATO allies in new Russian proposals to strengthen peace and security in Europe. Presumably, primarily because of such fears, these proposals were not rejected outright in the West. It is unlikely that they want to test the power of the Avangards, Zircons and other newest Russian weapons on themselves."
In an interview with RIA Novosti, Alyaksandr Lukashenka said Belarus will offer Russia to deploy nuclear weapons on its territory if NATO takes a similar step in Poland. A few weeks later, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, Uladzimir Makei, in an interview with RT Arabic, informed that in the face of the threat posed by the North Atlantic Alliance, the possibility of deploying nuclear forces on the territory of the republic was being considered . The Kremlin, through the mouth of the press spokesman of President Dmitry Peskov, replied that the appearance of weapons on the Russian borders requires a reaction from Moscow to balance the situation. And that different options are possible.
Russia already has sea, air and land (Iskander-M and Iskander-K) carriers of tactical nuclear weapons in the Kaliningrad Oblast, thanks to which the most western region of Russia "has at gunpoint "European direction. On the other hand, this point of view seems to be incorrect. The fact is that much larger territories of Eastern Europe can be fired from the territory of Belarus. Additionally, Kaliningrad is a very small and therefore a fragile territorial unit in the event of a "great war".
The nuclear force left the republic, but the ammunition storage infrastructure remained. These are warehouses, underground warehouses, fenced areas. As Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with RIA Novosti, as a diligent landlord "he did not destroy anything, all the barns are standing still".
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