"I order the Minister of Defense and the Head of the General Headquarters to turn the Russian army deterrence forces to the special regime of combat duty," the President of Russia announced to the whole world.
Nuclear weapons are a powerful instrument, which, however, only works until it is enacted.
So who does Putin threaten, and is the war criminal ready to cross the line?
The world has been thrice on the verge of self-destruction.
Mykyta Khruschev in 1962 brought the civilization to the edge of non-being. After the Caribbean crisis ended, the adventurous comrade General Secretary was removed from power. Another positive outcome was the beginning of the nuclear force control era and of gradual reduction of atomic reserves.
In September 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov turned out to be wiser than the system of space monitoring and early deferral of a nuclear attack. He ignored the protocol that would have led to a nuclear strike in response to mere sun reflections.
In November of the same year, NATO held its nuclear exercise "Able Archer."
Moscow, which had hit a Korean passenger aircraft only a month earlier, perceived the exercise as a preparatory move for the first strike. So the nuclear forces of the USSR and its satellites were brought to high alert mode.
The new era of nuclear insanity goes hand in hand with Putin’s name.
First, the Russian elite that had already plunged elbow-deep into the Chechen blood imagined itself to be the Serbian dictator Milosevič, who was removed from power in circumvention of the Security Council of the UN.
Then Moscow realized that the nuclear bat was the only guarantee of the regime's survival.
The then-Secretary of the Security Council Vladimir Putin started to dismantle the moderate system of nuclear deterrence, implemented during the Soviet Stagnation Era.
It went as far as bringing the forces to high alert during the Crimea invasion, development of new samples of Wunderwaffen, animations of strikes in Florida, threats to turn the United States into "radioactive ash," and the maxim, "we will go to Heaven as martyrs and the enemies will rot."
In 2020 the new principles of the Russian state policy of nuclear deterrence were implemented. They entail several possibilities of enactment of the tactical nuclear weapons, including against the non-nuclear Ukraine (you can learn more from the research project "Storm Alert: Growing Threats in the Black Sea Region").
Immediately after Crimea was seized, Russians began to rebuild nuclear weapon repositories Feodosia-13 and Balaklava. We have all reasons to suppose that they already contain tactical nuclear weapons for the existing Black Sea Russian platforms.
On the 27th of February, 2022, the Russian military committed a rocket strike in Ukraine with the strategic bomber TU-22 from the air space of Belorus.
That must have been a celebratory firework in honour of the inexorably positive outcome of the referendum that implemented new Constitutional changes, which allow Russia to install its nuclear forces in the Belorus territory.
According to the Kremlin strategists’ calculations, nuclear weapons must compensate for the lack of other capacities, deter the West, as well as, as an issue of strategic stability, become a consistent way to bargain with America for all sorts of concessions.
The presence of nuclear weapons ensures special attitudes from the adepts of political realism theory, who operate with such categories as power potential, not moral values or international law. This very worldview, and no love for Russia, pushes them towards Kremlin in their geopolitical calculations.
Despite Joseph Biden’s insistent warnings about the full-scale war with Ukraine and multiple publications of the aggression plans in Western media, Putin still dared the blitzkrieg.
It seems apparent that he directed his actions against a Ukraine that only exists in his imagination and which was supposed to fall after a single blow. Russian media gladly compared Ukraine with modern Afghanistan but instead received an Afghanistan that triggered the fall of the Empire of Evil.
Putin hoped that the West would limit itself to "deep concern." He miscalculated, since Ukraine has demonstrated unprecedented endurance and will to freedom and managed to convince the West of the need for equally unprecedented steps.
The Germans brought Nord Stream-2 to a halt and are supplying weapons – despite their long-lasting policy of never irritating Russia. The EU is ready to strengthen the Ukrainian airforce. The West, even if not entirely, is cutting the center of "strategic corruption" from SWIFT. The Kremlin master and the "Lake" cooperative can lose their innumerable assets. The EU is closing its sky to the Russian civil aircrafts...
Who knows if the Ukrainians could manage to close their sky from the military planes with NATO air shelter? Or would NATO take the step of including Ukraine in the jurisdiction of Article 5 of the Washington agreement? We are unable to glimpse the deep darkness of Putin’s mind, but may it be that all that seems inevitable to him?
"Vladimir Putin took up a historical responsibility, having decided not to leave the resolution of the Ukrainian question to the future generations," wrote Piotr Akopov on the 26th of February in an article "The Advent of Russia and the New World," that was later removed from the RIA news website.
We have already seen the "final resolution of the question" rhetoric before. This is a warning that in the coming days, we will get to experience a new set of tactics.
Kharkiv tragedy is just a prelude. A similar fate is awaiting other large cities, most of all, the "Mother of Rus Cities." It will target the civil population and infrastructure. The total terror tactic has been consistently improved, from Grozny to Aleppo.
In a psychopathological sense, it is the helpless rage of a bastard against something to which he has no right and without which "Russky Mir" remains a perversion.
The nuclear bat is the last ace of a psychologically and physically ill man with a historical greatness mania. Perhaps, he is hurrying to "fulfill his fate" because his health is not leaving him too much time?
Even so, the threat is directed not only towards Ukraine but also the United States. It's an attempt to affirm the right to commit violence and instill the "new" world order in which Ukraine has no place.
So he is still hoping to quickly "resolve the Ukrainian question" and desires no impediments. The West is indeed not going to intervene because it carefully measures the stakes in a game with nuclear warheads.
Since an escalation with the West remains unlikely, the question is: could Putin dare to enact a strike in Ukraine?
There is no answer to the question. It is possible that he may follow the logic of Adolf Hitler, who considered devastated Germany's existence emptied of meaning.
That being said, it seems obvious that even Gerasimov and Shoigu, who without a moment's hesitation saluted at the order of bringing the nuclear forces to high alert, realize the level of insanity of such a strike. Even being a part of Putin's regime, they are unlikely to desire the roles of pariahs.
So if Vladimir Putin accidentally suffers a heart attack, it will likely come from touching the handle of the notorious case. Most probably, the honorary funeral of the chief will be organized according to the Soviet tradition by the most likely successor – one of the pillars of the regime, who will then claim the absolute power in Russia as well as its innumerable riches which he shall intend to enjoy indefinitely.
Oleksandr Khara, The Center of Defense Strategies