Putin: Everything is going according to plan…
…only that the Russian plans suck. After all, about sixty five-year plans have failed, in which they have promptly not met the quotas set. And they reacted by changing the expected odds. So we shouldn't be surprised. But before commenting on the "nuclear fear" one thing needs to be clarified.
I have written many times that the tactic of the western mass media is to constantly terrorize the population.
The principle is this: a terrified person has three choices, the famous three F. Fight, Flight, Freeze.
The first is combat, because it annihilates the threat. If you're not strong enough and can't fight, you have to run away. If you don't even know where to run or you aren't fast enough, the last chance is the "Freeze", that is, you hide in a hole, or blend in and remain motionless.
Every time the press terrorizes the populace, with threats that the populace can't fight, and from which they can't escape, the populace goes into Freeze. No demonstrations, no protests, the population will endure anything because they are afraid.
This is what they have been doing to you for years, between Covid, wars, migratory waves and everything that "scares you".
So there was a need for some terror, while with the excuse of war they kill us with an inflation that existed even before the war, but oh well, go back to Freeze and don't break.
But what does this mean? That you have to divide everything by ten, in the news of Putin trying to save his skin in a desperate move.
For one thing, all the talk about referendums and Russian military doctrine and Putin annexing those areas as a pretext to launch nuclear weapons is bullshit.
Putin doesn't need pretexts, he doesn't need justifications, if he wants to launch an atomic bomb he must give an order to do so and that's it.
And being told that there are no nukes on standby. What does it mean?
Atomics don't keep in the fridge. When they are assembled and ready to use, they require very expensive maintenance. So what do we do? A thousand are made, and only fifty are on standby, that is, ready for use. The rest is disassembled, without an ogive, whose fissile material decays rapidly.
The West, in theory has ~7000 nuclear devices, but because of the cycle I'm talking about, only ~600 are on standby (between USA, France, UK). I mean, if you give orders to use them, you have them. Israel has 300 in its arsenal, say, which means it has about thirty of them ready for use. We proceed in rotation, so that in a certain period of time all the weapons are reassembled, and thus put into maintenance and ready for use. In this process, that is, during the checks some devices prove to be unreliable and are discarded to be repaired. Every few, in rotation, the bombs are reassembled, checked, etc.
Russia has about 6000 nuclear weapons, but in standby it has… exactly zero . For obvious budgetary reasons. When nuclear weapons pass from storage to standby status, the secret services notice it, because their assembly and maintenance require activities easily visible from satellites. Juicers are hard to hide, et cetera et cetera.
So far, the Russians have NOT put nuclear weapons on standby. Thus, if Putin were to order nuclear weapons to be used tomorrow, he would be told that it takes about a month to be able to launch them. And this is one of the reasons why it is so afraid of NATO approaching its borders: it cannot keep nuclear weapons on standby for budgetary reasons, and if someone launches nuclear weapons like this, suddenly, without warning, they are bitter cocks.
This image of Putin with his finger on the button, in my opinion, you need to get out of your head. It is used to put you in Freeze. It serves to scare you.
Forget nuclear war. The day Putin really wanted to make it and started taking it out of the freezer, you would notice it. Submarines going to ports, etc etc.
His "offensive" is just to buy time. The reason he lost wasn't that he didn't have enough men. The reason is that his organization sucks. For the rest, it is from the invention of the machine gun that the number of men does not count.
It is not true that he would drop atomic bombs if someone bombed Russian territory. Posts behind the border have already been bombed heavily by the Ukrainians, only the Russians have called it "sabotage". BUT I repeat:
- Putin is a dictator. He doesn't need an excuse to throw nukes.
- If he could, he would have already done it. But he didn't.
And I don't want to be told that Putin really thinks “ yes, those 150,000 men from the first wave massacred me, but I didn't use the atomic bombs because there is a resolution from the municipal administration which forbids it unless they attack us ”. They are bales. It doesn't need excuses or reasons to drop nukes. He's a dictator.
So now he's going to try to recruit 300,000 people and, if he succeeds (if they don't break an arm, if they don't run away, etc.), send them into the assault. Only that:
- It has no weapons. They are recycling Soviet tanks from the 60s
- It has no ammo. He's buying junk from North Korea and Iran.
- Money is running out and its heavy industry is paralysed.
- The Chinese are not helping him.
What does he hope to do, then?
It is now clear that Putin is afraid of only one thing. Of the population. If he persists in not using the term "war", if he doesn't put the nation in a state of general mobilization, if he recruits only in Asia to spare Moscow's bourgeois families, it is because he is afraid of the population. In those parts whoever falls from power dies.
So he must see that he is proactive, that he is the one who goes on the attack. To be aggressive. And to buy time.
Let's clarify:
- Attackers need to move long distances more than defenders. In the Ukrainian Winter, they can dream about it. Especially after announcing their intentions, the Ukrainians will now fortify themselves in muddy territory, as they did last winter. And Saint Javelin will then do its job.
- It will take him months just to get the reservists back into shape. He will have to equip and arm them. And we saw that he wasn't good last time either.
- He has a secret service that can't penetrate Ukraine. They got intoxicated with the news of an attack on Kherson, while the Ukrainians were amassing troops on the Kharkiv side. He has a blind secret service.
- Russian weapons have proven inaccurate. They fired 50,000 shells a day to do the same damage the Ukrainian army does by firing 500 rounds. Because the Russian artillery does 25/30 km, and completely loses accuracy. Among Westerners (and also the Chinese) the standard is 70/80 km with an accuracy of 9/10 meters.
Under these conditions, an assault is just a bloodbath. But Putin does not think of getting there. Why'?
Why Turkey.
The Turks know full well that NATO barely tolerates them, and they know they are problem number one. But they also know that they are not replaceable. Unless Ukraine proves to be such a tough and strong fighter that it can replace the Turks.
Erdogan knows very well that if Ukraine survives the war, even without winning it but with a draw, it will join NATO the day after the signing of the peace treaty (NATO does not accept the entry of countries already at war). And he knows that, after the test they showed us, Ukraine would be considered very capable of defending the southeast side of Europe. Turkey would be replaced.
Tomorrow, they would be "expelled" from NATO, somehow. So Erdogan will play the fake peacemaker game, with two goals:
- Avoid a clear end to the war. For Erdogan, war could also last forever, and it wouldn't be too bad for him.
- Even if the war comes to an end, it must do so in a way that prevents Ukraine from joining NATO.
Putin only knows that he has to wait for Erdogan to produce an eternal, or at least a very long-lasting, stalemate. A low-intensity war, enough to pass as war for Westerners, which would not let Ukraine join NATO, but not enough to worry the Russian public. Maybe send more Chechens to die.
Another thing he is hoping for is that the position of Westerners will soften with the winter. But with the nationalization of Uniper and the arrival of six regasifiers, its main customer doesn't seem in a position to fall to its knees. By now Europe has equipped itself, and some in one way and some in the other, we will hardly end up on our knees for gas.
On the other hand, even waiting for the Italian elections counts for little. Meloni is with the Ukrainians, and Salvini's position would also be a minority in the center-right. It is possible that this will give Orban some respite, but for Putin there will be nothing but crumbs.
This terror too needs to be scaled down. Today's centre-right parties have already ruled the country, and even when Berlusconi and Putin shared whoredom in the Latvian, not much seems to have happened to the NATO alliance, or to Europe.
I'd say stop worrying. The "Captain" has already been in government, with the grillini, and it didn't seem like a thunderbolt of fascism. He just made some really loud little shit.
But what if Putin really uses nuclear power?
Good. So let's talk about tactical nuclear weapons launched by artillery and short-range cruise missiles. It depends on the power.
Launching a 5Kt tactical nuclear on a city is in fact equivalent to a carpet bombing. You get the same effect you would have with a very violent conventional bombardment, you force the adversary to react with the same measures, but the tactical advantage of destroying a city is not so great.
But there is a small problem: “Kaliningrad”. As long as there are missiles that can be nuclear-armed, but not in standby and not really armed, that's okay. After all, it's Russian territory. But the moment preparations for putting nuclear weapons on standby are noticed, Kaliningrad will be wiped out of the universe. It's too dangerous to exist. And since the missiles we are talking about are launched from trucks, this means that the whole of Kaliningrad and all of its territory would disappear in a burning hell just a second after Putin used a nuke on Ukraine.
Because I repeat: if your enemy shows readiness and confidence in the use of theater nuclear weapons, Kaliningrad is such a disproportionate risk to NATO that it doesn't have a slightest chance of existing five minutes later.
Therefore, let's rule out that Putin uses small weapons like 4/5 Kt. It would be useless in the field, and would cause the immediate disappearance of Kaliningrad.
Let's go up to 10/15 Kt. Power of Hiroshima, so to speak. It is still a "tactical" nuke and is equivalent to the carpet bombing of a large city. Again, the carpet bombing of which city? If it exploded too close to the NATO border, apart from hell in Kaliningrad, retaliation would immediately be triggered. It means hitting Russian logistic targets, in Ukraine or just behind the border, with Western planes/cruise missiles, perhaps with 4/5 Kt bombs, to clarify. Result for Putin: even worse. No conquests and a lot of damage. It also means the probable deployment of Aegis in Ukraine, which Putin sees very, very badly.
Throwing these weapons at Ukrainian soldiers? If they are scattered in the muddy countryside, it is of little use. Although devastating in the city, a 10/15Kt bomb has limited power on troops, especially over a large territory:
Sure, if a division is moving all together it could do a lot of damage. But in itself, the way the Ukrainians fight, who are very scattered over the territory, there wouldn't be many chances to use it.
More powerful weapons remain, which however would be considered strategic and would obtain the brutal response, i.e. Moscow and St. Petersburg in smoke immediately. Putin doesn't want this, for the simple reason that Russia's anti-missile defense is a joke: for this reason Putin keeps threatening and showing weapons to attack (which are prototypes), but hardly mentions his defenses. He doesn't have them.
Ultimately, I'd say there's no reason to lock yourself in a hole and be paralyzed by fear.
If you want to take to the streets to protest, do it . After all, remember that the Russian Revolution began in the midst of World War II.
And no one has scruples.