Who are the Kremlin hawks who are pressuring Putin to use the atomic bomb

Our public opinion, if you look at Russia, has always attached great importance to the so-called “dissent”. He did so in the sixties and seventies, when in Russia the noble sacrifice of Sakharov and gods Solzhenicyn did not change one centimeter of the Soviet reality, where the only dissident who really changed anything was later expressed by the Communist Party of the USSR, and it was Mikhail Gorbachev.

And repeats the mistake even today, extolling navalny (before) and the street protests against the mobilization of reservists (now) who, just like the dissidents of the past, do not get any results in Russia.

There is a very simple reason: Russia, with the exception of perhaps a few years in the early nineties, has never known democracy as we understand it. And therefore, in its power structures, it responds to completely different logics.

We see well until today. The strategy of Vladimir Putin, that of a limited war (the so-called “special military operation”) with which to uproot the entire eastern part of Ukraine, failed. The Ukrainians resist, are financed and armed throughout the West and, after a series of setbacks, have entered the counter-offensive.

Furthermore: military operations revealed the fragility of Russia as a system of countries. Confused and messy logistics, corruption in the Armed Forces, detachment of political and military leaders from the base, inefficient bureaucracy, so much so that Putin himself had to raise his voice in the Council of Ministers to correct the distortions in the call-up of reservists.

The fear of total defeat above all after the referendums and the annexation (actual or presumed) of the Ukrainian territoriesit is a specter that no one in the Russian ruling class wants to accept. It is against this specter, and certainly not because of the street protests, that the political struggle has been unleashed in Russia, centered on a theme: to use or not to use atomic bombs?

The risk is real, and we’ve talked about it in these pages. But the point is the speech about nuclear war it is, today, also a way of working on the eventual succession of Vladimir Putin and on modifying the system of power of which Putin himself is the expression.

The mobilization of the reservists, albeit partial, brought the war to the homes of the Russians. (now even ordinary citizens are struggling, not just volunteers more or less paid to do it or real mercenaries like Wagner’s) at a time when things at the front are going badly and the Russian system doesn’t seem able to respond. The nuclear weapon, as terrible as it is to say, thus becomes a shortcut to a hypothetical victory, but also the disavowal of the strategies followed until now.

The first to talk about it, months ago, was Dmitry Medvedev, now “only” deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, but former president and prime minister of the Russian Federation. He was a liberal, a friend of the West, he became a fierce hawk. Many, however, considered him a luxury retiree who, playing hardball, tried to accredit himself to more prestigious positions or even to succeed Putin.

After the last defeats, however, the discourse on the use of atomic bombs divides the Russian power elites along another summit: if you are a real man, you love your country, you really want to win the war, be ready to use them; otherwise you are not true patriots and seek defeat.

This speech was inaugurated by Ramzan Kadyrov, Picturesque and discussed president of Chechnya. Kadyrov sent thousands of Chechens noted for their courage and ruthlessness to fight in Ukraine. In short, he has some bragging credit in the Kremlin. In the Russian retreat from the city of Liman, he no longer controlled himself and attacked General Aleksandr Lapin, commander of the contingent that had been sent to repel the Ukrainians, accusing him of nepotism (photo of the general honoring his son, commander only in Liman) , ineptitude and also being an ambush that has never been seen on the front lines.

To top it off, Kadyrov added that Putin must use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Such a huge crack at the top of Russia had never been seen before. Also because another tough character has arrived to amplify it: Evgenyj PrigozhinPetersburg, now better known as the founder of the mercenary army called the Wagner Group, protagonist on the Ukrainian front as in Syria, Africa and wherever Russia needs to lead. Prigozhin agreed on everything with Kadyrov, encouraged him and reiterated the need to use all available means.

Nobody attacks Putin directly. But now there are many who are beating the generals and the chain of command. a current that passes the highly criticized Chief of Staff Gerasimov, to the highly contested Defense Minister Shoigu (which in fact says: “There is no need for atomic weapons, they only serve to defend against enemy nuclear attacks”) but in the end it comes to Putin himself, who is still Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.

It was, for example, also shooting to zero in the high hierarchies Andrey Gurulyov, former general and former commander of the 58th Army Corps. He clearly said that “the problem is not in the trenches, but in Frunzevskaya (the street in Moscow where the Ministry of Defense is, ed.)” And proposed a general cleanup.

The problem is that Gurulyov is not only a soldier and an expert, but also a deputy for United Russia, Putin’s party. If he spoke out loud, it means that doubts and criticism of Putin’s strategy are now on the United Russia agenda as well.

As we said, the hypothesis of a defeat is unacceptable for Russia. And it is precisely this that increases the risk of a nuclear conflict. Rumors emanating from Moscow say that the use of devastating but limited-range tactical atomic bombs is gaining adherents in political circles. Russian National Guard (called Rosgvardiya), a 340,000-strong corps created by Putin in 2016 that reports to the President and has never had an idyllic relationship with the traditional military and the Ministry of Defence.

The Guard fights a lot in Ukraine and feels abandoned by the army. Most importantly, the Guard is part of the Ministry of the Interior. Their murmurs, less and less contained, are also the expression of the discontent of the secret services, where it is not by chance that the number of those who are more and more inclined to consider the use of atomic bombs viable.

We will see how long Putin wants or can keep these mounting pressures under control. To succeed, however, he will have to stop the Ukrainian offensive, reverse the trend of field operations, secure a real “liberation” and therefore annexation of the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhya regions, and at the same time keep the Russian economy in check compared to the nearly 22,000 western sanctions that hit it. And today that seems like a true mission impossible.