“Victory is assured, I have no doubt about it.”
Said Vladimir Putin this week, while speaking to factory workers in St. Petersburg, where he commemorated the 80th anniversary of a turning point in the siege of Leningrad.
That moment in history is meaningful for Putin, or at least it should be. His brother Viktor, just a year old, died during the siege in a children’s home in 1942. He was buried in an unmarked grave. The younger Putin was born 10 years later, the only son to survive out of three born to his parents.
“My brother, whom I have never seen and did not know, was buried here,” Putin told an audience, during a solemn ceremony at a cemetery in St. Petersburg in 2012. “I don’t even know where exactly.”
There are unavoidable parallels between the Russian military’s tactics in Ukraine and the Leningrad blockade, but Putin, immune to the tragic irony, told veterans that his “special operation” is an effort to liberate ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers from persecution by Nazis. “What we’re doing today… is an attempt to stop this and protect our people,” he insisted.
Sergei Lavrov echoed Putin. “Just as Hitler wanted a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish question, now, if you read Western politicians… they clearly say Russia must suffer a strategic defeat,” Lavrov said. The White House initially expressed something like incredulity at Lavrov. “Our first reaction is how dare he compare anything to the Holocaust [especially] a war they started,” national security spokesman John Kirby marveled. Then he remembered who he was talking about. “It’s almost so absurd that it’s not worth responding to,” Kirby added.
The sheer brazenness inherent in Putin’s cynical exploitation of a historic tragedy that unfolded in his birthplace and took the life of his own brother is hard to comprehend. At least 45 people were killed last week when a Russian missile slammed into an apartment building housing 1,700 people in Dnipro. Six of the dead were children. Ukraine is still digging bodies out of the rubble.
And yet, there was Putin, in St. Petersburg, casting the West and Ukraine as Nazis, and himself as liberator. “These are our historical territories,” he went on, presumably referring to the Donbas.
There was some speculation that Putin might declare outright war on Ukraine in St. Petersburg, which would mark an escalation, but could be a tougher sell domestically, with the caveat that Russians don’t have much choice when it comes to buying what the Kremlin is selling.
“Russia is still not operating a war economy that would direct all of its efforts towards Ukraine. In fact, until now Putin has taken pains to try to ring-fence the conflict from day-to-day life, most so for Moscow and St. Petersburg,” Rabobank’s Michael Every wrote Thursday, exhorting macro watchers to “consider the economic impact of a further escalation”:
Of course, defense spending in most Western countries is small beer compared to the rest of the economy — but that is the point: It would need to rise rapidly, and stay high. And it would do this in a very tight labor market: Would those losing tech jobs producing trigger warnings have to be reallocated to producing triggers? The point is a serious one behind the pun.
Serious indeed. According to a VICE article Every mentioned, the US is having trouble producing nuclear triggers. “The Pentagon’s goal is to spin up production and make 80 plutonium pits a year by 2030 [but] federal investigators [say] that’s a pipe dream,” the piece said, citing a GAO report.
Speaking of nukes and triggers, Dmitry Medvedev is (still) making threats. “The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger a nuclear war,” Medvedev, who was president during a brief four-year interregnum, mused on Telegram. “Nuclear powers have never lost major conflicts on which their fate depends.”
Dmitry Peskov defended Medvedev’s remarks as “in full accordance” with the Kremlin’s nuclear doctrine which, Peskov helpfully reminded the world, “allows for a nuclear strike after aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.”
Speaking to Davos via video link this week, Henry Kissinger gently noted that, “The destruction of Russia as a state that can pursue its own policies will open up the vast area of its 11 time zones to internal conflict and to outside intervention at the time when there are 15,000 and more nuclear weapons on its territory.”
“Nuclear powers have never lost major conflicts on which their fate depends.”
Says he, with a sample size of zero…
France lost territory that was part of metropolitan France in the Algerian War as a nuclear power.
Dmitry Peskov defended Medvedev’s remarks as “in full accordance” with the Kremlin’s nuclear doctrine which, Peskov helpfully reminded the world, “allows for a nuclear strike after aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.”
then we’re not going to see any nuclear strikes since no one, and certainly not Kyiv, threatens the existence of the Russian state… though he may think of nuking Putin? That guy seems like a real threat to the future of the Russian state…
The biggest threat to the Russian state is from Russians themselves https://cepa.org/article/wagner-victory-new-russian-civil-war-is-now-under-way/. I don’t see them nuking their own country but Putin is clearly living outside of reality.
From the leader and I had thought you would be citing Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. “Victory is assured!”
When buying real estate, it is not only important to consider its proximity to military bases or other likely nuclear targets, but also important to consider prevailing winds. While you don’t have to be all that far from the point of impact to survive a nuclear blast, fallout (which is an actual physical thing like grains of incredibly radioactive sand, not a metaphor or a general term for radioactivity) can travel for tens of miles.
Unfortunately, I had to cross a very desirable city off my list of possible new locale contenders for precisely that reason.
Since it’s off the list, may I ask what city it was?
Personally, I think that Russia winning WW2 had some costs, and one is there has been no real housecleaning since 1945…I think we need to stand our ground, but the risks are very, very high…I wouldn’t invite Kissinger over for dinner, but he is very right that we’re not facing the risk….Complacency leads to instability, and letting Putin seize Crimea and wasting 20 years in Afghanistan followed by overnight collapse egged Putin on…So now, humiliation is a feature not a bug….Putin is the Toto Riina of the balance of power in Europe….
When I read “Henry Kissinger gently noted that, The destruction of Russia as a state….”, a chill went up my spine. Wrong again, Henry. If the Russian state (Putin) has been destroyed and internal conflict with outside intervention is the current state of affairs, the only nukes remaining in Russia will be the ones that misfired. I sincerely hope that no one is listening to this blood soaked fool.
WMD, interesting comment. I too have thought about the same thing. Sad to think, that here in the 21st century, we’re reliving the early 1960s.
BTW, Walt, don’t forget about the Yellowstone super volcano. That could cross a few more places off your list.
I wonder if triggers can be re-used. When the Minuteman is retired, move the pits to its replacement, etc.