Russian President Vladimir Putin has been flexing his nuclear arsenal at the allied West in response to his crumbling warfront in southeastern Ukraine. As Russia’s tired and weakened forces struggle to maintain the territory they’ve already annexed, let alone annex more, Putin is running out of options to keep his now eight-month-long war in Ukraine afloat in his favor.
Putin may have a passion for saying outlandish and destructive things on television that make him seem like an all-powerful dictator with an arsenal behind him, but that’s simply not the case in real-life. Putin is unlikely to escalate the conflict to nuclear war.
Nuclear weapons are terrifying both in Ukraine and abroad. After all, it is technically within Putin’s dictatorial power to press the nuclear button and annihilate whatever stands between him a victory, making for a situation of mutually assured destruction reminiscent of the bygone days of the Cold War.
As the world has seen with Russia’s air, sea and ground forces throughout the illegal invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s military command is plagued by rampant corruption and wilful incompetence. It is unlikely he and his forces are capable of successfully using nuclear weapons.
Take the sinking of the Russian warship Moskva as a prime example of the consequences of this corruption and incompetence. When Putin visited this warship back in 2014, he touted the Moskva as a “modern and advanced” warship that was the pride of his Black Sea Fleet, capable of resisting enemy attacks and able to “destroy carrier-based attack units.”
Despite the proud comments, the ship obviously didn’t work as intended, considering the supposedly invincible Moskva now lies on the bottom of the Black Sea after being blown to pieces by Ukrainian missiles.
All the hype about Russia’s supposedly superior technology is pure propaganda, and its military’s true capabilities are more akin to those of a declining nation than a global superpower like the United States.
The sinking of the Moskva, the destruction of Putin’s beloved Kerch Strait bridge and other spectacular military failures prove that Russia’s military capabilities are all talk.
The supposed “modernization” of Russian military hardware was woefully behind schedule even before the invasion began, and now that Russia is banned and sanctioned from accessing any sort of foreign military technology, there’s barely any hope of Russia ever forming a modern military while Putin is still in charge.
Let’s be real: the days of the strong and militarily powerful Soviet Union are over. What’s left in its place is a weak and stagnant nation that’s hopes of modernization utterly trashed by an insane dictator forced to buy weapons from North Korea and Iran to keep his armed forces alive.
In the end, Putin’s nuclear threats should be taken with the biggest grain of salt imaginable. The nations that continue to support Ukraine should have little to worry about.
Featured image provided by the Russian president’s official website via Creative Commons.
