{"id":1484701,"date":"2024-08-20T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-20T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1484701"},"modified":"2024-08-20T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-20T10:00:00","slug":"why-might-ukraine-want-russia-to-use-nuclear-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/why-might-ukraine-want-russia-to-use-nuclear-weapons\/1484701\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Might Ukraine Want Russia To Use Nuclear Weapons?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Might Ukraine Want Russia To Use Nuclear Weapons?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0on Sunday in an interview with leading Russian media that:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSuch escalation on the part of Ukraine (by<\/a>\u00a0invading<\/a>\u00a0Kursk<\/a>) is an attempt to push Russia to asymmetric actions. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, let’s say to use nuclear weapons. I know for sure that Ukraine would be very happy if Russia or we used\u00a0tactical nuclear weapons<\/a>\u00a0there. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

They will applaud it. Then, probably, we would hardly have allies left. In general, there would be no even sympathetic countries left.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

That sounds absurd on the surface, but it actually makes a lot of sense if one thinks more deeply about it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The use of nuclear weapons is taboo because of the physical and environmental damage that they cause.<\/p>\n

There are also credible fears that they\u2019d lead to one\u2019s nuclear-armed adversaries retaliating in a tit-for-tat fashion, thus rapidly climbing the escalation ladder to the brink of World War III. <\/strong>Nevertheless, several states still retain nuclear weapons for deterrence purposes in line with their respective doctrines.<\/p>\n

As regards Russia\u2019s<\/a>, they can be employed in the event of a large-scale conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state, among other conditions. That hasn\u2019t yet happened in the Kursk context, but the hypothetical scenario of that region or another being completely captured by Ukraine might be deemed by some decisionmakers as meeting the criterion depending on how rapidly the front lines collapse. To be clear, there\u2019s no credible indication that anything of the sort will unfold.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Ukraine might capitalize upon its attack there by striking the nearby nuclear power plant.<\/strong> A top Russian military journalist had earlier\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0that \u201c[Ukraine] plan[s] to strike the storage sites of spent nuclear fuel of a nuclear power plant\u201d in either Kursk or Zaporozhye. This then prompted the Russian Defense Ministry to\u00a0officially declare<\/a>\u00a0that \u201ctough military and military-technical countermeasures will be taken immediately\u201d in that event.<\/p>\n

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0that such strikes against those targets \u201ccould result in a large-scale technogenic catastrophe in Europe\u201d, not to mention in the Russian heartland if the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant melts down in the aftermath. These combined conventional (invasion) and unconventional (de facto dirty bomb) attacks could push Russian decisionmakers closer to seriously considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons in response as a last resort out of self-defense.<\/p>\n

Whether dropped inside of Russia\u2019s own borders or Ukraine\u2019s, they\u2019d send a political shockwave across the world due to breaking the previously mentioned taboo, which could indeed lead to there being \u201cno even sympathetic countries left\u201d in support of Russia barring a few like North Korea. <\/strong><\/p>\n

China and India would be under immense pressure to distance themselves from Russia, not just by the West, but also for appearance\u2019s sake since they wouldn\u2019t want to legitimize the use of nuclear weapons by their rivals.<\/p>\n

Reports have also swirled<\/a>\u00a0that the US might conventionally retaliate against Russian forces inside of Ukrainian-claimed territory if nuclear weapons are used there, thus placing their proxy war on a direct path to World War III if that happens.<\/strong>\u00a0Ukraine is still losing to Russia<\/a>\u00a0despite its sneak attack in Kursk so its leadership might have calculated, however \u201cirrationally\u201d it seems to objective observers, to provoke Russia into raising the stakes to that level.<\/p>\n

It’s this escalation sequence that Lukashenko likely had in mind when warning that Ukraine wants Russia to use nuclear weapons, which could hypothetically occur if it completely captures a Russian region and\/or is responsible for a nuclear catastrophe through its attacks against Russian nuclear power plants.<\/p>\n

The first probably won\u2019t happen since their offensive appears to have been halted, while the second is entirely in Ukraine\u2019s hands, so it\u2019s incumbent on the West to do its utmost to stop them from doing this.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nTue, 08\/20\/2024 – 02:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/why-might-ukraine-want-russia-use-nuclear-weapons<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Might Ukraine Want Russia To Use Nuclear Weapons? Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko\u00a0warned\u00a0on Sunday in an interview with leading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1484702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1484701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1484701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1484702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1484701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1484701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1484701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}