Two Russian-controlled regions in eastern Ukraine announced plans to hold referendums on joining Russia later this week and an ally of President Vladimir Putin said the votes would alter the geopolitical landscape in Moscow’s favour forever…
Any military operations mounted by the Ukraine in these areas will be claimed an attack on Mother Russia by Putin and might likely garner more domestic support for the war…
I wonder if any of the best & brightest in DC or the EU planned for this possible scenario? Or did they calculate that Putin would backdown & end the war? [Emphasis added.]
Tjscott0,
Even after more than half-a-year of warfare, experts in DC and the EU may not have fully accounted for the possibility of Putin attempting tactical nuclear warfare in Ukraine. One may reasonably assume that Russia already knows exactly how much long-term damage would be done to future Ukrainian cash crops, such as wheat, barley, and corn, in the event of radioactive contamination.
The 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, approximately 100km north of Kyiv, provided Russian government scientists an incredibly large amount of real-world and real-time data about the potential effects of nuclear radiation on Moscow and environs, as well as on Ukraine’s then-Soviet/now-Russian territory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
In 1986, Soviet (now Russian) scientists no doubt provided their government with a great deal of proprietary or inentionally concealed data related to the initial and immediately subsequent radiation releases coming from the Chernobyl reactor. There’s no way to judge exactly how much initial data was withheld from the International Energy Commission, which came in months and years later to assess the damage caused by the Chernobyl disaster.
Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and their Remediation: Twenty Years of Experience - Report of the Chernobyl Forum Expert Group
https://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/publications/pdf/pub1239_web.p…
Vladimir Putin has at his beck and call a phalanx of nuclear weapons, weather, and environmental experts who can calculate the likely effects upon Moscow and other important Russian territory of his use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukrainian and/or NATO targets. His standing team gives him an operational advantage over NATO or Ukrainian forces in that he can make tactical nuclear decisions according to pre-arranged plans, while NATO and Ukrainian personnel scramble to make risk and damage assessments after-the-fact.
Putin through proxies has announced his intention to enlarge Russian territory entitled “tactical nuclear defense” by means of farcical public referenda on Tuesday. This would provide Russia justification to utilize tactical nuclear weapons in response to NATO-backed Ukrainian military offensives in the “democratically annexed” territory in Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
The New York Times explains Putin’s maneuvering as follows:
…Russia moved to cement its grip on territory it occupies in eastern and southern Ukraine, as Kremlin proxies there announced plans on Tuesday for referendums on annexation to Russia, indicating a possible escalation of the war.
The Kremlin signaled that if Russia were to go forward with annexation — even if no other countries recognized it — any further military action by Ukraine in those regions could be seen as an attack on Russia itself, justifying any military response by the nation with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
“Encroaching on the territory of Russia is a crime, the commission of which allows you to use all the forces of self-defense,”, Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former Russian president and the vice chairman of Mr. Putin’s Security Council, wrote on the Telegram social network on Tuesday, describing the referendums as having “huge significance.” [Emphasis added.]
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/world/europe/russia-annex…
American, European, and NATO leaders may not fully account for Russia’s advantage in scientific knowledge of radiatiological effects upon Ukrainian territory, Moscow weather patterns, and war-gaming scenarios involving Russian tactical nukes. Europe and the US may not fully account for the extent to which European and American voters might pressure their leaders to abandon Ukraine in fear of Russia’s possible use of tactical nukes in Western Ukraine, the Baltics, or areas where radiological damage upon NATO territory might occur.
Russian nuclear defense scientists clearly have a head-start on US and European scientists. This might give them a huge advantage in being able to provide real-time radiological impact analysis to Russian citizens while EU and US scientists would be scrambling to reaassure a terrified public screaming at NATO leaders to raise a white flag and retreat from Ukraine.