As the United States prepares to announce a new shipment of military equipment to Ukraine and Kyiv is urging its western partners for advanced main battle tanks and other heavy weapons, Moscow responded on Thursday with a familiar series of threats. Once again, Russia alluded to its nuclear arsenal to dissuade the US and its NATO allies from helping Ukraine withstand the full-scale invasion launched by President Vladimir Putin nearly 11 months ago.
“It never occurs to any of the lowlifes to draw an elementary conclusion from this: the defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war can trigger a nuclear war,” said former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a top Putin ally who now serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council said in a post on Telegram.
“Nuclear powers have not lost any major conflicts on which their fate depended,” added Medvedev, whose rhetoric has become increasingly bellicose as the war has progressed for almost a year.
Ukrainian troops in the US for training on the Patriot missile defense system 08:26
Asked whether Medvedev’s surprise statement represented an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine or a broader Russian standoff with the West, the Kremlin’s top spokesman said Thursday that the comments are consistent with Russia’s nuclear doctrine.
“There are no contradictions there,” said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church strikes an eerily similar tone, admitting in a sermon on Thursday that “an attempt to destroy Russia would mean the end of the world.”
“Today there are very great threats to the world, to our country and to all mankind, because some crazy people came up with the idea that the great Russian power, possessing powerful weapons, is inhabited by very strong people … who have always come out victorious that they can be defeated,” said Patriarch Kirill, a staunch supporter of the entire Kremlin policy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Orthodox Easter mass at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow April 24, 2022, led by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. Getty
In Washington, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said the latest comments were consistent with Russia’s previous statements about the use of nuclear weapons.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such kind of rhetoric from Russia by and large… We think that provocative rhetoric regarding nuclear weapons is not only dangerous, but also reckless, increasing the risk of miscalculations, and frankly should be avoided,” Patel said. “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be waged.”
This week the Russian authorities staged a show of force. Putin ordered the Russian army to be expanded by around 300,000 people, which would increase the number of serving soldiers to 1.5 million over the next three years. He also ordered the establishment of a new army corps and two military districts near the European borders.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu later presented an ambitious plan for these changes, saying new military structures would be created around Moscow, St. Petersburg and Karelia. The last location is right on the border with Finland, a Nordic country that is in the process of becoming a member of NATO.
“Self-sufficient” units should also be deployed in the Ukrainian areas that Russia illegally annexed, Shogui said, although the Russian military does not fully control those areas.
“Ensuring the military security of the state, protecting the new federal subjects and critical facilities of the Russian Federation can only be guaranteed by strengthening the main structural components of the armed forces,” Shoigu said, according to the state news agency RIA Novosti.
The Kremlin called the planned military expansion a response to “the proxy war” the West is allegedly waging against Russia in Ukraine — a claim Moscow has long made to justify its brutal invasion.
Some analysts have noted that the changes announced this week — particularly the splitting of the current single western military district into several smaller ones — represent something of a step backwards.
“Shoigu’s announcements since December have been a little surreal to watch. In most cases, the attitudinal changes revert to the past (pre-2010 era) and are not a step forward,” said Dara Massicot, senior policy researcher at RAND Corporation. “[His] Statements of more quarters and more divisions will require more manpower and equipment to populate them (even if they fall short of targets). This is a big task that can be achieved by 2026 without major changes in the Russian economy and the human resources system.”
On Wednesday, Putin toured a defense company, the Obukhovsky Plant in St. Petersburg, which is under US sanctions, to praise efforts to increase production of weapons and heavy machinery.
Russia has lost a significant amount of equipment over the past 11 months, either destroyed, captured by Ukraine or left behind by retreating Russian soldiers. Independent Russian and international media have also reported extensively on the myriad instances of ill-equipped Russian soldiers ending up on the front lines, pointing to production difficulties in the country’s military-industrial complex.
Putin told workers at the plant that Russia was entitled to call Ukraine a country full of “neo-Nazis,” and he insisted victory was “inevitable.”
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