A day after NATO pledged to step up military aid to Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion, President Vladimir Putin has raised the tone in what he increasingly sees as a war against the West. He openly threatened the use of nuclear weapons and, out of rhetoric, bombed a large depot of weapons donated to Kiev.
“If anyone wants to interfere in what is happening in Ukraine now, they have to know that Russia’s response will be swift and accurate,” he told lawmakers in St Petersburg. “We have all sorts of tools that the West can’t have, and we’re not going to flaunt our weapons, but we’re going to use them if we have to. I want everyone to know that.”
The tools in question are, needless to say, nuclear weapons — Russia has the largest arsenal in the world, followed closely by the US. Putin has been using this threat since the 1st of the conflict, and on Monday his chancellor, Sergei Lavrov, had said that the Third World War was a “serious and real risk”.
So far, the West has shrugged it off, in terms. It continues to measure the elasticity of the red line that Putin says he has drawn for interventions in Ukraine, having avoided, for example, the sending of fighter jets. But in recent weeks the sophistication of donated weapons has grown, to try to keep up with the new phase of the war, the most open battle in the east and south of the country.
More importantly, the Russian sent a military signal as well as economic retaliation by cutting off natural gas supplied to Poland and Bulgaria. The Defense Ministry has publicized an attack with Kalibr cruise missiles, fired from the Black Sea, on a US and European weapons depot at an aluminum factory in Zaporijia, one of the cities on the route of current Russian attacks.
No one disputed the information. Until now, Russia had not attacked convoys with the weapons, presumably to avoid possible Western casualties, and the actions against warehouses were not publicized. In general, even because he was pressured to continue the war, he, like the West, had avoided more incisive reactions.
While biting, the Kremlin also seems to have found time to blow. It operated a rare prisoner swap with the US, and made its news agencies highlight a report that Turkey believes in a close meeting between Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, something that seems off the radar.
On Monday (26), the western military alliance led by the United States put aside some of the modesty to which it clung and announced an increase in military aid to the Ukrainians – who have already received, in fact or in promise, more than US$ 7 billion since the start of the war on 24 February.
He signaled that he anticipated a protracted conflict, as he created an office to centralize these remittances that will meet once a month to discuss priorities. This was, of course, seen as a further step in Western involvement in the war.
THE Sheet spoke with two people linked to military sectors in Moscow who, obviously in times of conflict, cannot identify themselves. He has heard a report that the Ukrainian War is already openly treated as a physical clash with the West.
There is an obvious assessment that the combined military might of NATO countries exceeds that of Russia in case the conflict goes beyond Ukrainian borders. But that Moscow has tactical advantages that have not been measured because it treats the action in its neighbor as a special operation, without national mobilization that would guarantee it more firepower and human resources.
And, of course, there is the atomic bomb. The two people said they were sure the country would use the device in the event of an imminent military catastrophe. Both affirm that the atmosphere in the Armed Forces is not one of desire for the end of the war, but of its intensification to at least finish what was revealed by a general last week: conquer Donbass (Russian-speaking East) and establish a link to the Crimea annexed in 2014 or even Transnistria, a Russian breakaway region in Moldova that is experiencing instability.
Among the military that people have access to, criticism of the Kremlin is not pacifist: they think that a concerted effort should have been made to take Kiev, not the multi-pronged action that left the attempt to take the capital unguarded.
To exemplify the degree of animosity towards the US, they cited a report published on Monday by the American TV network NBC. According to her, military aid to Kiev goes beyond sharing satellite photos and sending weapons.
The Americans, according to the report, actively participate in the designation of targets and the prediction of Russian attacks, thus protecting anti-aircraft missile batteries, for example.
More serious for Moscow, the US would have given the coordinates so that at least one large Il-76 transport plane could have been shot down in an attempt to establish a beachhead at Hostomel, near Kiev, with hundreds of soldiers on board.
As wrote on Twitter one of the most astute military observers of the war, Rob Lee (King’s College, London), the fact is that very little is known about what happens in the field. That said, he said, “I think the level of intelligence shared by the US is perhaps unprecedented in military history.”
An article published by Russian investigative journalists Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov of the Center for European Policy Analysis (Washington) describes a similar scenario of dissatisfaction and a silent war between the military, spies and the intelligence sectors blamed for the poor quality of information. preview on the Ukrainian mood.
A general in charge of the area at the FSB, the main Russian security agency, was even arrested, according to the authors. There are even some public signals: the famous blogger Alexander Arutiunov, a veteran of special forces, publicly lashed out at Putin on Telegram. “Dear Valdimir Vladimirovich [prenome e patronÃmico do presidente]please decide if we are fighting a war or masturbating,” he said.
