Today may well turn out to be an important one in determining the outcome of the war in Ukraine. Putin will apparently announce the way he intends to respond to the Ukrainians damaging the Kerch bridge, built in 2018, which joins Crimea to Russia. He described it yesterday as an act of terrorism. This is rich coming from him after Russian forces have leveled cities, killed and injured thousands of innocent civilians, and pillaged their way across eastern Ukraine.
There are well-founded fears he will escalate things and since his conventional forces are being well beaten in Kharkiv and Kherson, some people think he may reach for nuclear weapons. If so, it could mark a turning point from a regional conflict into something much larger and far more dangerous for Europe and the wider world.
This morning missiles have hit central Kyiv with the target seemingly being early morning traffic carrying people to work. Everyone assumes this is in retaliation for the Kerch bridge explosion but more may be to come. It is all profoundly worrying:
Several missile strikes in the center of Kyiv. Burning cars with people who were commuting to work. The strike was deliberately carried out during rush hour on a busy street to inflict maximum losses and intimidate. A pure act of terrorism. pic.twitter.com/KaOwUSMZio
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) October 10, 2022
It may be that Putin has decided not to risk getting into a nuclear exchange and this morning's barrage is it. He hasn't targeted any strategic military infrastructure and his forces continue to withdraw from territory in Kherson and Kharkiv. But who knows what he is thinking
An article in The Atlantic by Eric Schlosser the author of Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, sets out what could happen and how the US and Europe might have to respond. It's well worth reading.
He says:
"The risk of nuclear war is greater today than at any other time since the Cuban missile crisis. And the decisions that would have to be made after a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine are unprecedented."
Russian options for using nuclear weapons, in his opinion, are:
"(1) a detonation over the Black Sea, causing no casualties but demonstrating a resolve to cross the nuclear threshold and signaling that worse may come, (2) a decapitation strike against the Ukrainian leadership, attempting to kill President Volodymyr Zelensky and his advisers in their underground bunkers, (3) a nuclear assault on a Ukrainian military target, perhaps an air base or a supply depot, that is not intended to harm civilians, and (4) the destruction of a Ukrainian city, causing mass civilian casualties and creating terror to precipitate a swift surrender—the same aims that motivated the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
Schlosser quotes people who think the west's response will use nuclear weapons only as a last resort and they will stick to "doing everything possible to avoid a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States."
By way of an example, he quotes one expert saying if Russia hits Ukraine with a nuclear cruise missile launched from a ship, the ship might be sunk. The number of Ukrainian casualties should determine the severity of the American response with any escalation limited to conventional weapons. Russia’s Black Sea fleet might be sunk in retaliation, and a no-fly zone could be imposed over Ukraine, even if it meant destroying anti-aircraft units on Russian soil.
Whatever happens, there are some very difficult decisions ahead.
I noticed a long Twitter thread on Saturday which illustrates as well as anything can the sheer stupidity of war. It’s about the battle for a small strategically unimportant village of 850 people before the war and the enormous loss of life on the Russian side to take it over five months, only to lose it again in a single day.
It is a shocking story of utterly pointless losses that I thought we had said goodbye to forever but apparently not.
1/ What is the price of defeat? Few episodes in the Ukraine war illustrate this more vividly than the five-month battle for the village of Dovhenke, an episode which likely cost hundreds of lives but was entirely futile for Russia. A 🧵. pic.twitter.com/wa3g808IHW
— ChrisO (@ChrisO_wiki) October 7, 2022
And to show why the west must steel itself to win the conflict and see Russia soundly beaten back to within its 2014 borders, The Washington Post has a harrowing report about what life has been like for Ukrainians in occupied territories. It is truly shocking.
The Russians are a thousand years behind us in democracy and human rights and are more akin to barbaric Mongol hordes. They really must be stopped or Europe will risk descending into a new dark age.
