There is no shortage of distressing developments in the present war in Europe.
But one of the most frightening of the list has to be the fact that the old and tried nuclear deterrence seem to have lost its effectiveness, clearing the way for kinetic displays of nuclear power in order to jolt the memory of the European leaderships as to the dangers of messing with the Russian bear.
Add to that the fact that Moscow’s ‘red lines’ have been breached one after another – as I write Ukraine is striking Russian territory with NATO weapons like there’s no tomorrow – and we can see how the situation has impossibly escalated.
It now has arisen that Russia has trained its navy to target sites deep inside Europe with nuclear-capable missiles in a potential – by now virtually certain – conflict with Nato
Financial Times reported:
“Moscow had rehearsed using tactical nuclear weapons in the early stages of a conflict with a major world power, […] planning for a series of overwhelming strikes across western Europe.”
You read it right – EARLY STAGES: not using strikes as a last measure, but as an early salvo.
Financial times examined Russian files drawn up between 2008 and 2014 that include a target list for nuclear capable missiles, as Russian officers highlight the advantages of using nuclear tactical strikes at an early stage, in ‘sudden and pre-emptive blows’.
“Russia’s Baltic fleet targets are largely in Norway and Germany — including the naval base in Bergen, as well as radar sites and special forces facilities. Russia’s Northern Fleet would be expected to hit defense industrial targets, such as the submarine shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness in north-west England. A target near Hull may be an industrial site – it is marked with a smokestack.”
The sample in the documents was just a small portion of thousands of targets across Europe.
Targets all over the continent would be at risk just as soon as the Russian Federation forces engaged with Nato forces even in in frontline countries such as the Baltic states and Poland.
“’Their concept of war is total war’, said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey who studies arms control. ‘They see these things [tactical nuclear warheads] as potentially war-winning weapons’, he added. ‘They’re going to want to use them, and they’re going to want to use them pretty quickly’.”
Tactical nuclear weapons have a shorter range and are less destructive than the larger ‘Armageddon-strategic’ weapons.
“The presentation also references the option of a so-called demonstration strike — detonating a nuclear weapon in a remote area ‘in a period of immediate threat of aggression’ before an actual conflict to scare western countries. Russia has never acknowledged such strikes are in its doctrine.
According to NATO’S calculations, countries in the alliance have less than 5 per cent of the air defence capacities required to protect the alliance’s eastern flank against a full-scale attack from Russia. Putin said in June that Europe would be ‘more or less defenseless” against Russian missile strikes’.”
Russia’s armed forces practiced in June loading anti-ship cruise missiles, part of an undeclared stockpile of tactical nuclear warheads.
Russians moved the missiles in the containers, accompanied by the appropriate guard force and procedures for handling a nuclear warhead.
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