Chilling demands grow on Putin for nuclear strikes on West | World | News

Pressure is mounting inside Vladimir Putin‘s circle for the dictator to launch pre-emptive nuclear attacks on Europe. Geopolitics and security ‘expert’ Yury Baranchik, a prominent military blogger, claimed using atomic weapons would be “the lesser of two sins” to save Russia. Moscow should abandon its current nuclear doctrine and embrace first-use strikes against NATO countries, he demanded.

He spoke as the Kremlin abandoned its long-time pretence that the conflict in Ukraine is a “special military operation” and not a full war. Putin’s official mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov told state TV: “There is a war going on. It is a real war.” The reason was that Western states were aiding Ukraine to attack Russia.

“They are helping them to target us via their satellites,” he said. “They are helping them to direct foreign weapons at our targets, through their entire infrastructure.

“Under these circumstances, we must realise that the Kyiv regime is capable of anything.

“A nuclear strike is, of course, a sin,” Baranchik wrote. “But the lesser of two: everything is permissible to preserve Russia.”

The nuclear war calls are coming as Russia suffers major setbacks in the war in Ukraine, with its frontline in gridlock or retreat, oil refineries ablaze and Putin losing his grip on his main ‘trophy’ – the Crimean peninsula.

Baranchik endorsed recent arguments by Kremlin strategist Sergei Karaganov that Russia may soon be forced to use nuclear weapons against Europe — but went further. He argued that if Russian casualties in any military operation were likely to exceed 10,000 troops, commanders should instead resort to tactical nuclear weapons.

“Operations where our troop losses might exceed, say, 10,000 people should be resolved using tactical nuclear weapons instead,” he wrote.

“The lives of our boys, so that they can produce offspring, should be preserved.”

By some estimates Putin’s three-day operation to invade Kyiv has cost half a million Russian lives.

He also urged Russia to rewrite its nuclear doctrine to permit unrestricted pre-emptive nuclear strikes, saying Moscow should be able to attack “at any moment simply on the basis of a threat assessment.”

Baranchik dismissed the idea of a warning nuclear explosion favoured by Karaganov, known as ‘Professor Doomsday’ – insisting Russia should instead carry out immediate strikes on military targets across Europe.

“When Russia moves to using nuclear weapons, there shouldn’t be some kind of demonstration — only real strikes on real targets,” he wrote.

He proposed attacks on NATO bases, missile defence sites, air bases, naval facilities and command centres, coupled with an ultimatum to Washington that any US retaliation would trigger strategic nuclear strikes against America.

In another extraordinary passage, Baranchik argued that after such a conflict Russia should seize European technology and demand annual “tribute” of €100 billion [£86 billion] for up to 30 years as compensation for losses suffered since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Baranchik’s comments come after Karaganov, one of Russia’s best-known foreign policy strategists and a long-time advocate of nuclear escalation, warned that Moscow could be forced to strike Europe reducing countries to “dust” within a year if the war in Ukraine continued to escalate.

“We should issue NATO an ultimatum,” said Baranchik.

“Either they end the war against Russia via Ukraine, or Russia moves to using nuclear weapons on European territory. And if the US intervenes, then on US territory too.”

Russia must “deliver a crushing blow to the adversary, completely break its will and capacity to resist, and, in the ultimatum scenario, ensure the realisation of Russia’s concept for a new security system in Europe and the world.”

While Putin has used the term “war” previously, it has not altered the legal classification of the conflict in Russia as a “special military operation”.