The mobilisation, the first since the Soviet Union battled Nazi Germany in World War Two, begins immediately. Speaking shortly after Putin, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russia would draft some 300,000 additional personnel out of some 25 million potential fighters at Moscow's disposal. Putin signed a decree on partially mobilising Russia's reserves, arguing that Russian soldiers were effectively facing the full force of the "collective West" which has been supplying Kyiv's forces with advanced weapons, training and intelligence. Putin's war in Ukraine has killed tens of thousands, unleashed an inflationary wave through the global economy and triggered the worst confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when many feared nuclear war imminent. In essence, Putin is betting that by increasing the risk of a direct confrontation between the U.S.-led NATO military alliance and Russia - a step towards World War Three - the West will blink over its support for Ukraine, something it has shown no sign of doing so far. The address, which followed a critical Russian battlefield defeat in northeastern Ukraine, fuelled speculation about the course of the war, the 69-year-old Kremlin chief's own future, and showed Putin was doubling down on what he calls his "special military operation" in Ukraine. And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them." "In its aggressive anti-Russian policy, the West has crossed every line," Putin said. "If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people - this is not a bluff," Putin said in a televised address to the nation.Ĭiting NATO expansion towards Russia's borders, Putin said the West was plotting to destroy his country, engaging in "nuclear blackmail" by allegedly discussing the potential use of nuclear weapons against Moscow, and accused the United States, the European Union and Britain of encouraging Ukraine to push military operations into Russia itself. 24 invasion, Putin explicitly raised the spectre of a nuclear conflict, approved a plan to annex a chunk of Ukraine the size of Hungary, and called up 300,000 reservists. In the biggest escalation of the Ukraine war since Moscow's Feb. These little nukes were, fortunately, never used.LONDON, Sept 21 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered Russia's first mobilisation since World War Two and backed a plan to annex swathes of Ukraine, warning the West he was not bluffing when he said he'd be ready to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia. According to Rawnsley and Brown, "These "small" weapons, many of them more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, would have obliterated any battlefield and irradiated much of the surrounding area.” The troops were trained to parachute or SCUBA dive behind enemy lines with their little nukes, to using them to take out strategic installations or render vast tracts of land uninhabitable. “Soldiers from elite Army engineer and Special Forces units, as well as Navy SEALs and select Marines, trained to use the bombs, known as "backpack nukes," on battlefronts from Eastern Europe to Korea to Iran," they write. The plan was to build something a little smaller than the devastating bombs that had been designed after the end of the Second World War.Īdam Rawnsley and David Brown chronicle in a sprawling feature the stories of the special forces troops. special forces started packing miniature nuclear bombs, devices known as the B-54 Special Atomic Demoliniton Munition (SADM), which they could carry in a backpack. To fill in the gap in military options between a full nuclear assault and engaging in a lopsided war, says Foreign Policy, U.S. In the event that communist forces launched a limited, non-nuclear attack, the president would have to choose between defeat at the hands of a superior conventional force or a staggeringly disproportionate (and potentially suicidal) strategic nuclear exchange that would kill hundreds of millions of people. Though massive retaliation was economical, it allowed the United States almost no flexibility in how it responded to enemy aggression. To balance the scales, the United States wielded the will, or at least the bluster, to threaten mass nuclear retribution for any militaristic slight, says Foreign Policy: In the wake of World War II, and throughout the Cold War, the United States and its NATO allies were severely outmanned and outgunned compared to the Soviets and their allies.
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