THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024
Pope Francis has been making regular appeals to Putin for ending this unprovoked aggression showed by Russia on February 24 this year, setting off the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II.
But on Sunday he seemed extremely concerned with the never-ending war and Putin’s nuclear rhetoric. Francis told the public, gathered in St Peter's Square, that he was abandoning his usual religious theme for his Sunday noon remarks to concentrate his reflection on Ukraine.
In February 2022, shortly before invading Ukraine, President Putin placed Russia's nuclear forces at "special combat readiness" and held high-profile nuclear drills. More recently, he said that if Russia’s territorial integrity is threatened, it will without a doubt use all available means to protect Russia and its people. This, he said, was not a bluff.
Why was Putin prompted to speak about nuclear weapons option, that too against a much weaker and smaller adversary? This is because Ukraine has mounted a strong defence despite being vastly outnumbered. Although Russian bombing and shelling have pummelled Ukrainian cities, civilian casualties are growing by the day, but Ukrainian forces have been fighting back tooth and nail. It blitzed the northeast over the weekend, driving Russian troops from more than 1,000 square miles and completely reshaping the six-month-old war in a matter of days.
Now there is no doubt that a grinding stalemate has been transformed in Ukraine’s favour, giving Russia its most humiliating defeat since the initial stages of the war. The lightning gains have lifted morale in Ukraine and frustrated Putin. All his plans have gone awry.
To make matters worse, the people of Russia are protesting Putin’s decision to deploy reserves for the war against Ukraine as the regular Russian army has been delivered a bloody nose. The worry is if Russia continues to suffer further setbacks, it might be tempted to use a smaller tactical weapon in Ukraine as a "game changer", to break a stalemate or avoid defeat.
Now there is a legitimate reason to worry that in that circumstance, Putin might use a nuclear weapon - most likely on the ground in Ukraine to terrify everyone and get his way. If this happens, then the war will escalate a level of no return. Russia has 5,977 nuclear heads and NATO com countries combined have 5,943 nuclear warheads.
Tactical nuclear weapons are small nuclear warheads and delivery systems intended for use on the battlefield, or for a limited strike. They are designed to destroy enemy targets in a specific area without causing widespread radioactive fallout. The smallest tactical nuclear weapons can be one kiloton or less (producing the equivalent to a thousand tonnes of the explosive TNT). The largest ones can be as big as 100 kilotons.
Strategic nuclear weapons are larger (up to 1,000 kilotons) and are launched from longer range. By comparison, the atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was 15 kilotons.
As we can see that even the tactical nukes are many more times destructive than that were dropped in Japan. Although nuclear weapons have never been used post World War-II, but there have been multiple occasions when the world almost came close to witness nuclear war between USA and erstwhile USSR during the peak of Cold War in 70s and 80s.
But the way Russian President is threatening to use nukes shows that we could be heading for realtime crisis situation. If Russia fires its nukes then America will also be forced to retaliate with its tactical nukes. We are staring at huge destruction which we can’t even imagine.
Putin has to de-escalate by swallowing his pride and retreat. There are reports of Russia offering truce to Ukraine but how serious Putin is about truce is anybody’s guess. There has to be a worldwide action against Russia, which has to include India. It can’t afford to abstain from voting against Russia at United Nations. Just saying that this is not the era of war is not going to suffice.
