RUSSIA may be tempted to use tactical battlefield nuclear weapons to make territorial gains in Ukraine, security expert Keir Giles has warned.
Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia programme at the think-tank Chatham House, told GB News: “Tactical nuclear weapons, non-strategic nuclear weapons, not the missiles landing on cities that most people first think of when they think of nuclear weapons, but instead ones with a very localised effect, and Russia has a very large arsenal of them much larger than any other country in the world.
“And it’s seen this partly as a deterrent, it’s partly holding up the prospect that they might be used in a conflict in order to try to persuade everybody else not to get in Russia’s way.
“But we have to bear in mind when we listen to these Russian nuclear threats that are absolutely constant. These constant reminders that they might use nuclear weapons, this isn’t something new that started with a conflict in Ukraine.
“It’s a long standing intensive campaign that we’ve heard, not just from Russian state media and President Putin himself but also from all of Russia’s propagandists and influencers and useful idiots in the West.
“This warning that if you get in Russia’s way, the likelihood is that it will escalate to a global conflict with nuclear weapons.
“The problem is, that’s a long way from what Russia itself thinks nuclear weapons are for.
“And when you ask yourself, could they use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine? You have to ask yourself the same question as Russian generals would: ‘what good would it actually do? What operational benefit would it bring that they don’t get from the weapon systems they’re using at the moment? ‘
“The answer, it seems, is not very much. So would Russia, and that’s not just President Putin, but all the people in that decision making chain, risk nuclear retaliation for a very marginal benefit?
“Instead, Russia’s nuclear weapons are a tool to make us frightened of standing against Russia. And it works because you hear so much in the West that we mustn’t give too many weapons systems to Ukraine.
“We mustn’t defeat Russia too obviously, because then they might resort to this.”
Speaking to Darren McCaffrey on GB News, he said: “You mentioned the Ukrainian attempts to take Kherson in the south. That’s been expected for a long time but it hasn’t actually started on a major scale yet.
“They’re chipping away at Russian gains but what is happening, we learned from the UK MoD’s release this morning is that Russia is still transferring forces to that southern front to withstand what they’re expecting there and attack from Ukraine.
“And of course, that contributes to the fact that they’ve stalled in the east, they haven’t made those gains of Ukrainian territory that they were apparently hoping and expecting to do. And meanwhile, they’re still deep in their own manpower crisis.
“They are dragging the bottom of the swamp for all of the people that can get into the armed forces, volunteer battalions of untrained people, prisoners being signed up as private military company contractors, mercenaries.
“All the signs are that Russia is playing out this conflict with whatever it can find to throw into the fight including the antique armoured vehicles that are being dragged out of storage.
“So yes, it’s a stalemate at the moment, but it seems that the longer it goes on the longer Russia has to dig into these deep reserves of all of the manpower and equipment that we have never expected to be seeing the light of day.”
Mr Giles said: “As long as Russia keeps throwing in armoured vehicles no matter how old they may be, if they’ve got more of them than Ukraine has anti tank weapons, then Russia still wins.
“And that’s just a symptom of how Russia can keep at this for longer than any democracy could. Russia’s got this long history of starting wars disastrously but then just grinding down the enemy through sheer mass and pounding away at them and outlasting them out-surviving them.
“That’s why it’s so important for Ukraine to keep that international support and international solidarity, despite the economic cost of what Russia is doing is hitting home…the cost of living rising not just in the UK, but across Europe, that’s a consequence of this war.
“And it’s one of the tests for European solidarity behind Ukraine and keeping hold of that, that idea realisation that the fighting may be in Ukraine but actually it’s the frontline for the whole of Europe.”
