Vladimir Putin is playing the nuclear card again

Russian President Vladimir Putinhe put the nuclear card back on the table due to the lack of progress on the Ukrainian front during the winter campaign and in an attempt to force the West to give up arming the enemy’s military in the long term.

Putin announced an agreement on the early deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus just four days after the request NOW In a joint statement with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, withdrawing its nuclear arsenals from abroad.

exactly, Xi he warned him in Moscow that this is a red line that no one must cross, because in a nuclear war “no winner”.

All this comes as Russian forces have significantly reduced the intensity of their attacks on Bakhmut, according to Western intelligence, although Ukrainian defenders believe the battle for the Donbass stronghold is far from over.

WAR OF NERVES

In an interview with Russian television, Putin accused the West of trying to sabotage the state visit of Xi, who was welcomed as a savior in Kremlinwhere both leaders discussed China’s peace plan for Ukraine.

In this regard, Putin today denied that Moscow and Beijing have a “military alliance” and that they are a threat to the world, and instead accused ON THAT to create a “global axis” similar to that which Nazi Germany forged with Italy and Japan in the 1930s.

In addition, International Criminal Court ordered the arrest of Putin ahead of the visit, the European Union announced on the same Monday, the day Xi arrived in Moscow, the delivery of one million missiles to Ukraine, a number that the Russian leader himself assessed as “more than decent”.

To this should be added the announcement of Fr United Kingdom that it will supply Kiev with depleted uranium ammunition, which the Kremlin chief described as a weapon with a “nuclear component”.

Putin’s revenge was not long in coming. Citing depleted uranium, he assured on Saturday that training for the Belarusian military to use tactical nuclear weapons would begin on April 3, and a silo would be built on July 1 to house them in the country, which borders Ukraine and NATO.

“Putin stripped himself of the moral map of the defenders of the nuclear non-proliferation regime without getting anything in return,” Maxim Starchak, an expert on nuclear policy, told the online Meduza newspaper.

LAMPION, MORE THAN ÓRDEG

Starchak believes that with this decision, Putin wants to force the US to accept its territorial conquests in Ukraine as a “done deal”, otherwise there will be no opportunity to talk about agreements on strategic disarmament.

Instead, in his opinion, the lukewarm reaction of the US and NATO shows that it has failed, because the White House does not want to participate in this bargaining and does not want the “nuclear factor” to be part of the equation of the Ukraine arrangement.

He Institute for the Study of War (ISW) He believes that the Kremlin tenant’s announcement is “irrelevant” in the context of a possible nuclear escalation, the possibility of which he still considers “extremely low”.

“Putin is trying to take advantage of Western fears of a possible nuclear escalation,” he asserted.

Kiev called for a meeting of the UN Security Council on Sunday because Russia is using its arsenal “as a threat and a means of intimidation”.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, assured EFE in Santo Domingo that Putin’s announcement represented “another escalation of the conflict,” a comment not inconsistent with his recent statement that Xi’s visit to Russia had reduced “the threat of nuclear war.”

THE ARMS RACE

It didn’t end there. Putin also warned countries against ON THAT that they will not be able to monitor the production of conventional weapons in Russia, which they will produce and modernize this year 1600 tanks, compared to the 400 or so that Kiev will receive from the Allies.

ISW considers some of these claims to be false. Remember that the main Russian tank factory, UralVagon Zabodproduces 20 tanks per month, when the Russian army loses 150 tanks per month on the battlefield.

Also, consider the US Abrams, German Leopards and British Challengers superior to the Russian T-55, T-62 and even the T-71.

Anyway, Ukrainian President, Vladimir Zelenskyassured that there will be no counter-offensive until Kiev receives enough Western ammunition.

Russian and Ukrainian war reports on Sunday reported fighting all along the front line, but especially in Bakhmut, where the Russians are continuing their unsuccessful assault operations.