Russian Think Tank Says Moscow Should Detonate a Nuke as a Show of Force
The piece suggested that a televised mushroom cloud may make NATO think twice about helping Ukraine.
A Russian think tank with ties to the Kremlin has published an op-ed suggesting Moscow should detonate a nuke to scare the West.
“The political-psychological effect of the nuclear mushroom, which will be shown live by all the world's TV channels, I hope, will bring back to Western politicians the only thing that prevented wars between the great powers after 1945 and that they have lost for the most part: fear of the nuclear war,” Dmitry Suslov wrote in a piece published on Profil.
Suslov is a member of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy think tank. He's a well-known member of the Russian intelligentsia, the author of several books, and a frequent talking head on both Western and Russian cable news channels.
This is, of course, all about Ukraine. Suslov opens the piece by suggesting that Kyiv may soon use western weapons, including long-range missiles, to strike at targets within Russia.
This is not the first time Profil authors have argued that Russia should remind the world to fear nuclear weapons. A 2023 op-ed by Sergey Karaganov, an advisor to both the deceased President Boris Yeltsin and the current officeholder, Vladimir Putin, argued that nukes were a gift from god that created a fear that prevented World War III. “On this fear rested the relative world of the last three quarters of the century,” he wrote. “That fear is gone…the fear of nuclear escalation must be restored. Otherwise, humanity is doomed.”
Ukraine, a country that Russia invaded unofficially in 2014 and officially in 2022, has already hit targets inside Russian territory. Last week, a probable Ukrainian drone strike damaged buildings that are part of Russia’s nuclear early warning system. On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the weapons their countries give to Ukraine should be used to strike military targets within Russia. Britain’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, has repeatedly said that Ukraine could use British weapons to strike military targets within Russia.
“Ukrainian soil is being attacked from bases in Russia. So, how do we explain to the Ukrainians that we’re going to have to protect these towns and basically everything we’re seeing around Kharkiv at the moment, if we tell them you are not allowed to hit the point from which the missiles are fired?” Macron said on Tuesday. “We think that we should allow them to neutralize the military sites from which the missiles are fired and, basically, the military sites from which Ukraine is attacked.”