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Ukraine war
OpinionComment
Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer

Opinion | What if Putin isn’t bluffing about a nuclear strike on Ukraine?

  • Using ‘referendums’ to turn conquered regions into ‘Russian territory’, Putin can say any Ukrainian attempt to recapture them is an attack on Russia
  • Perhaps the Russian president could even persuade his generals to deploy one nuke, but the war is still unlikely to end well for him

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RS-24 Yars ballistic missiles roll into Red Square during the Victory Day parade marking the 75th anniversary of the Nazi defeat in Moscow, Russia on June 24, 2020. Months into the Ukraine war, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made more explicit threats than usual about nuclear weapons. Photo: AP
Gwynne Dyer
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desperation was plain in the emergency measures he declared last week: an immediate mobilisation of at least 300,000 more troops, the sudden decision to use fake referendums to turn all the occupied parts of Ukraine into Russian territory, and more explicit threats than usual about nuclear weapons. “This is not a bluff,” Putin warned.
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It probably isn’t. The Russian president’s normal pattern, when he runs into a major setback, has been to escalate, so he is not acting out of character. However, he is clearly misinformed by his own generals, or just not listening to them.

The notion that 300,000 reservists (who received limited military training years ago) and technical specialists of various sorts (who may have no military experience whatsoever) can be turned into a useful fighting force in a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months, is bizarre. It shows just how ignorant Putin is about military affairs.

The Russian army does not have the equipment to arm all these people, or even enough trainers not already on the front to turn them into real soldiers. When these mostly unwilling conscripts are fed piecemeal into an already demoralised army, they will make the chaos even worse.
Then there are the “referendums”. Having postponed plans to stage referendums on joining Russia in the four provinces it partly controls, Putin suddenly put them back on the schedule after the big Ukrainian advance in mid-September. Voting began in Russian-occupied parts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces on Friday.
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Armed Russian soldiers went door-to-door with ballot boxes, asking if people want to join Russia. The soldiers wrote the answers down (one for the entire family), and then put them in the box.

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