Putin said Russia has delivered tactical nuclear warheads to Belarus and said Russia could use similar weapons in Ukraine, but there was no need to do so more than a year into the invasion.
Putin said Russia has delivered tactical nuclear warheads to Belarus and said Russia could use similar weapons in Ukraine, but there was no need to do so more than a year into the invasion.
News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication
Someone needs to take this crazy man out for the good of the planet
What if the person that replaces him is worse?
What "Great Man Theory" does to a person
One could say that with every election. It’s always a gamble but when you start from such a low point it really doesn’t matter. Putin is a violent dictator using a scorched earth policy against Ukraine. He is ruthlessly suppressing LGBTQ people to the point where their existence cannot be spoke of. He kills his opponents and is engaged in an ongoing Cold War with the USA. He needs to go.
https://archive.is/j7NqS if you don't want to be assaulted by cookie notices and paywalls and more.
Edit to add: I find it absurd how this logic is used so often:
He insisted that Russia was justified in starting the war because Ukraine was run by “Nazis”, even though its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish.
It's logical nonsense to think the two are mutually exclusive. Moreover, it ignores the very real issue of Nazis in Ukraine. We even see this "don't believe your eyes" nonsense, trying to convince people open and proud Nazis aren't in fact Nazis.
Nobody honestly believes Putin started the war to fight Nazis, he just used it as an excuse because he thought the West would stay out of his way for this flimsy lie. Instead he was quickly called out for using resources such as his own Wagner Group in the war which directly recruit modern Nazis, and thus lost all credibility.
Russia also said demilitarisation and pointed fingers at NATO. If it's this and denazification, it would suggest that Russia was hoping for NATO/the West to get involved in exactly the way that it got involved.
Further, the Russian perspective is that NATO was already involved by running a coup then supporting about a decade of shelling in Donbass. If that's the case – and the important detail here is not what westerners think NATO reps were doing in Ukraine all those years, but what Russia thought – there is no logical scenario in which Western involvement comes as a surprise. It was known to be there before the invasion.
And if NATO really wasn't in Ukraine before that invasion, the point still stands: Russia expected NATO involvement even if it's initial intelligence was faulty.
That doesn't mean denazification is the main reason for the invasion. Although there are people who accept that reasoning as it was more than just a Nazi presence. It was an organised Nazi terror campaign against ethnic Russians living in Ukraine, killing thousands.
I'm not sure if you wilfully missed the point of my comment or if I wasn't explicit enough. I wasn't commenting on whether or not that was Putin's motivation. My complaint was with the logic: "there can't be a Nazi problem in Ukraine, because Zelenskyy is Jewish". That's it. That logic is faulty and disingenuous, because that implies there is not a nazi problem in Ukraine, when there absolutely is.
Also, most people bringing up "but the Ukrainian Nazis!!!!" are arguing in bad faith (and a lot are fascists themselves, lol). So rather than wasting your time giving a nuanced overview of the far right in Ukraine, Russia, and the West to someone who's just going to ignore it and reply in bad faith anyways, it's way easier to just say "Zelensky's Jewish, lol" and move on with your life.
(To be 100% clear: I DO NOT THINK THE PERSON YOU REPLIED TO IS ARGUING IN BAD FAITH. This comment is more a blanket generalization, not about this specific interaction.)
Irritatingly, this suggests that Putin doesn't really know if his nukes work. If true, this badly breaks MAD.
this badly breaks MAD.
Not really. Current estimates are that Russia has about 1,500 missiles deployed and ready to go. If we assume only 10% will actually lift off, and of those, only 10% will hit their target and detonate, that leaves 15 cities to be hit. Living near a potential target?
How does this break MAD? So he moved nukes that have a range of thousands of miles a couple hundred miles closer? It's just a moderate escalation like new sanctions are. There's nothing majorly transformative about this.
What part of the article implies he doesn't know if they work?
What? No, it doesn't. It makes MAD more likely. The prevailing thought is if one nuclear state pops a nuke everyone else will; the question isn't who will win but who will survive. All Belarus needs to do it to attempt to use one it and it's over. But I suspect that Belarus doesn't control the nukes.
this suggests that Putin doesn’t really know if his nukes work
Sweet, more incoherent conspiracy theories backed by Liberal opinion pieces.
Something something Russian oligarchs used up all the money with corruption and the state forgot to maintain the nuclear warheads (you know, the thing that insures America can't just destroy the Russian state), pretty tired of this garbage.
The Russian "state" rapes its own soldiers, regularly and systematically. And then sends them to go do even worse to the Ukrainian civilians.
It's really, really not working right. It's not doing for its own people what those people deserve.
And just because you don't like the US doesn't mean you should like Putin's Russia.
(Me? At this point I'm all for whatever version of socialism or liberalism or social-democracy or whatever that says the Kurdish feminists are right, the Israeli dissidents are right, BLM is right, the Amazonian defenders are right, etc.; — and really, if your government rapes and tortures people, you're not okay.)