According to the new doctrine, they would be used to repel any attack that threatens its territorial integrity

▲ President Vladimir Putin (in file image) is the only one in Russia authorized to order nuclear aggression.Photo Ap

Juan Pablo Duch

Correspondent

La Jornada Newspaper
Wednesday, November 20, 2024, p. 21

Moscow. Hours after Russia suffered, in a territory internationally recognized as part of it, the first attack by Ukraine with long-range Atacms missiles, made by the United States, an aggression that occurred when the fratricidal war that confronts these two Slavic peoples turned a thousand days old. , President Vladimir Putin promulgated the decree that establishes, as of yesterday, the entry into force of the renewed Russian nuclear doctrine.

In the opinion of experts, this doctrine leaves the door open for Russia to invoke a legal basis if, for one reason or another, it considers it necessary to resort to its atomic arsenal.

Because, in the opinion of those who have thoroughly studied the text of the presidential decree, its formulations are sufficiently ambiguous so that there is a wide margin for the interpretation of the only person who is empowered to decide whether the time has come to give the order to activate the nuclear response: the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin.

Russia, for example, could believe that its doctrine allows it to resort to nuclear weapons to repel a attack even with conventional weapons or drones that represent a critical threat to sovereignty and/or territorial integrity of Russia and Belarus, its ally, but – they comment – ​​it does not define what it means by critical threat nor how many drones or conventional missiles have to be launched at the same time to merit a nuclear response.

The renewed doctrine, which replaces the one promulgated in 2020, establishes that a joint attack the aggression of a country that does not have atomic weapons that receives the support of a nuclear power, whether or not that support implies its direct participation in the conflict.

It seems like a paragraph tailored to the support in arms and finances that, throughout these thousand days of war, Ukraine is receiving from the United States, Great Britain, France – all three powers with atomic arsenals – and its other allies, although beyond qualifying it as a joint attack Experts do not believe the Kremlin will risk an exchange of devastating nuclear strikes.

It is also said that Russia will apply mechanisms of nuclear deterrence when a potential enemy (read North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO) deployment close to its borders air defense systems, short and medium range missiles, high precision non-nuclear weapons and armed drones. Likewise, the creation of new military alliances or the approach of the war infrastructure of existing ones (read, again, NATO) will be classified as a threat. What kind of nuclear deterrence will apply in those cases is without precision.

▲ Volodymir Zelensky, president of Ukraine, yesterday at a press conference in Denmark.Photo Afp

Most analysts highlight that the document clarifies that Russia is only going to resort to its nuclear arsenal as an extreme measure and when there is no other optionwhich – on the one hand – means that it is not imminent for Moscow to use its nuclear weapons as there is no automatic link with broadly outlined circumstances and, on the other, it leaves a pressure tool in the hands of the Kremlin to threaten the eventual possibility of delivering a nuclear strike.

On the stage of the G-20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, it was up to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who represents Putin there, to blame the United States and Ukraine for wanting an escalation of the war.

The fact that several Atacms missiles were used tonight in the Bryansk region is a clear sign that they (the United States and Ukraine) want to escalate the war. And without the Americans it would be impossible to use these high-tech missiles, as President Putin has pointed out when he warned that our position would change if permission was given to use long-range weapons of up to 300 kilometers.stated the head of Russian diplomacy from Brazil.

Military analyst Nikolai Mitrokhin cannot explain why it irritates Moscow so much that Ukraine has attacked the Bryansk region with American missiles, 110 kilometers from the border, when – he maintains – For more than a year, it has been launching those same rockets against Donietsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, regions that it has already incorporated into its Constitution and are supposed to be part of Russia.. And he wonders: Or are some regions more part of Russia than others?

Lavrov, in any case, condemned the Ukrainian attack, early yesterday morning, with six American Atacms missiles against a weapons depot in the Russian region of Bryansk, as reported by the Russian Ministry of Defense. It was the first blow of this type since Joe Biden’s Administration authorized Volodymir Zelensky’s government to use its long-range weapons (up to 300 kilometers away).

Silence of the G-20 criticized

Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky, at a press conference in kyiv, regretted that the G-20 leaders had not said a word about the decree promulgated by Putin. G-20 members met in Brazil. Did they say something? Nothing.

The Ukrainian president, in the context of the thousand days of war, stressed that Ukraine is not going to surrender and will fight until it imposes a just and lasting peacewhile Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov reiterated that the special military operation will continue until you achieve all your goals.