Emerging Risks

So, there’s a risk now emerging that in the face of military defeat at the conventional level, Russia will use nuclear weapons and plunge the world into a new and uncertain future. It’s a future in which low-yield nuclear weapons become usable in conflicts, certainly in terms of implicit and explicit coercive threats against military intervention—as China might do in a Taiwan crisis. In the worst case, a different perception of the operational utility of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons emerges in comparison to strategic nuclear forces. The nuclear genie is out of the bottle, and the question is whether it can ever be put back in.

The official warns that from Putin's vantage point, though, deep dissatisfaction with the situation in Ukraine and fear of the west turning the tide might actually provoke a nuclear display of some sort—one intended to shock the west and bring a halt to the war. The supply of western arms is also now a serious game changer, resupplying Ukraine while Russia is increasingly constrained. "Escalation is now a true danger," says the senior official.

The Russian president has threatened retaliation if NATO crosses "red lines" in Ukraine. Some experts say those lines have already been crossed.

The tone and tempo of threats from the Kremlin has escalated amid claims that Russia is fighting a wider war. It [nuclear war] still seems monstrously unlikely, but no longer unthinkable.

Moscow is recasting its fight with Ukraine as a broader war between Russia and the West, as Kremlin leaders and state propaganda outlets warn Russians that the conflict with its smaller neighbor could spill over into a global clash. The Kremlin and state-controlled media have warned in recent days that the West ultimately seeks to contain—or even destroy—Russia and have threatened retaliation, including the possibility of nuclear strikes.

US political scientist Graham Allison on Vladimir Putin and his friendship with Xi Jinping I think if you tried to put it in a single sentence, it is that if Putin is forced to choose between losing on the one hand in Ukraine and escalating the level of destruction, there’s every reason to believe he’ll escalate the level of destruction.

archived 1 May 2022 17:17:28 UTC

The deadlocked war with Ukraine has pushed Russia into an irreconcilable dilemma: it can neither accept reality nor keep denying it. This contradiction can be seen both in the official discourse on the unfolding disaster and the societal response to it. As one example, rampant patriotic mobilization persists alongside the pretense that normal life continues undisturbed. Likewise, there is the …

Joe Biden has chosen a high-risk strategy against Russia in Ukraine without managing, explaining, or perhaps comprehending the dangers.

archived 30 Apr 2022 01:41:24 UTC

... in war game scenarios he had taken part in, which considered what would happen if Russia hit Ukraine with nuclear weapons, the only way of de-escalation was when “clear political off-ramps and lines of communication between Moscow and Washington have remained open. In all the other games, the world is basically destroyed.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin could expand his unprovoked war in Ukraine into other countries like Moldova and Georgia.

archived 30 Apr 2022 12:49:55 UTC

But even as Russia bludgeons its way into limited gains in the east, it has lost so much already in the conflict with Ukraine.

’Either we lose in Ukraine or the Third World War starts’, says top Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan

War with China is very likely, but it is avoidable if we take the threat seriously and act now.

Nina Khrushcheva, an academic, warned the conflict in Ukraine is more dangerous because neither side appears prepared to 'back off'.

Russian TV host and Editor-in-Chief of state broadcaster RT, Margarita Simonyan, said she believed a nuclear strike to be the most 'probable' outcome in the war against Ukraine. One of the Kremlin's highest-profile mouthpieces, she also said that she believed World War III was 'realistic'.

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The leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group has warned that if Israel continues to target Iran’s presence in the region, Tehran could eventually retaliate by striking deep inside Israel

The Kremlin said on Thursday that Western arms supplies to Ukraine, including heavy weapons, posed a threat to the security of the European continent.

While continuing its armed assault on the battlefields of Donbas, the Kremlin is boosting its attacks against Ukraine on the information front as well. Russian propaganda’s continuing dehumanization of Ukraine and the West, which backs the Ukrainian defense efforts, is being used to justify increasingly radical methods in the Kremlin’s so-called “special military operation.” Perhaps the most serious event last …

Vladimir Putin uses warfare to make up for Russia’s weaknesses. That is why he is so dangerous

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Western governments and analysts have periodically expressed fears that the Kremlin might try to escalate by using nuclear weapons. This anxiety stems directly from Moscow’s own nuclear threat rhetoric: indeed, Putin’s original announcement of the officially designated spetsial’naya voyennaya operatsiya (special military operation) against Ukraine included …

*To read Part One, please click here.   Moscow’s official statements since February 24, 2022, concerning possible nuclear escalation should the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) directly intervene in the Russo-Ukrainian war represent a deliberate policy of strategic deterrence. Possible escalation to a world war between the US and Russia is acknowledged by both sides, which …

Predictions of a decisive offensive in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on the one hand, and speculation about peace talks on the other hand, have gained new intensity in both Russian propaganda and Western commentary in recent days—however, neither makes much sense. Russian artillery and air strikes against the solid Ukrainian defense lines up and down the Donbas front …

The latest Tweet by Disclose.tv states, 'JUST IN - Russia's FM Lavrov says "the danger [of a nuclear war] is serious, it is real, it cannot be underestimated." ' 🌎 JUST IN - Russia's FM Lavrov Says "the Danger [of a Nuclear War] is Serious, It is Real, ... - Latest Tweet by Disclose.tv.

On April 15, Zelensky announced that the world should “be ready” for the possibility that Putin will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Whether a gaffe or a Freudian slip, Biden’s call for a regime change in Russia, in the middle of an active armed conflict, checked off Moscow’s “existential threat” requirement for the use of nuclear weapons. Now finding himself cornered in an unwinnable position, Putin is invoking the concepts of “total war” and an “existential threat” to keep the US and NATO out of the conflict.

Ukraine has warned that Russia plans to attack more countries and expand its war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine's neighbor Moldova sho...

The likelihood of Russian President Vladimir Putin using nuclear weapons in his war on Ukraine is growing, local experts say. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that “all of the countries of the world” should prepare for the possibility of tactical nuclear weapons on CNN earlier this week. Tactical nuclear weapons are typically described as smaller nuclear weapons that can be used in a…