Putin's Nuclear Crisis - April 2022

The United States canceled the 02 April 2022 test launch of the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. The missile has a range of nearly 10,000 km, is capable of carrying nuclear weapons and is a key component of the arsenal of the US military. Its tests were postponed for the first time on 02 March 2022, shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin put his country's nuclear forces on high alert. The United States then said it was taking steps to minimize the "risk of miscalculation", but only "slightly" postponed the test. A spokesman for the US Air Force said the cancellation was due to the same reasons.

By early April 2022, Russia had done badly in the war with Ukraine, the carefullly burnished myth of its new professional armed forces lying in tatters, the country’s international prestige at rock bottom. Inefficient, inept and clumsily brutal, Russia’s military has one more chance to reverse its misfortunes on the battlefield as a new wave of reinforcements, culled from overseas, begin to make themselves felt. If Putin cannot come out of this war with something that looks like victory or there is an occasion where Russian soldiers are being seen to be generally routed, some obserrvers thought the chances of nuclear use by Russia to shore up its status as a world power start to grow.

Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns warned 14 April 2022 that the world should not underestimate Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose appetite for risk has only grown “as his grip on Russia has tightened.”

"Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership given the setbacks that they've faced so far militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons," Burns said during a speech to students at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, also known as Georgia Tech.

"We're obviously very concerned," he said, noting that Putin has an “almost mystical belief that his destiny is to restore Russia's sphere of influence," which includes bringing Ukraine under the Kremlin’s sway. "While we've seen some rhetorical posturing on the part of the Kremlin, moving to higher nuclear alert levels, so far we haven't seen a lot of practical evidence of the kind of deployments or military dispositions that would reinforce that concern," he said.

"We're obviously watching that very closely," Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters during a briefing. "We have seen nothing in the space out there that has given us cause to change that [nuclear deterrence] posture in any tangible way."

"There can be no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic — the balance must be restored," said Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council. Medvedev said 14 April 2022 Russia would place warheads in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea that is 500 kilometers from Berlin and less than 1,400 kilometers from London and Paris. Lithuania’s defense minister downplayed the Russian threat, calling it nothing new. "Nuclear weapons have always been kept in Kaliningrad ... the international community, the countries in the region, are perfectly aware of this,” Arvydas Anusauskas told Lithuania's BNS news service.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov assured 19 April 2022 that Moscow is not considering the possibility of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had previously stated, and does not plan to change power in Kyiv. "We are talking only about conventional weapons." Zelensky himself, according to the minister, is difficult to trust - he constantly changes his point of view. Zelensky claimed that Russia allegedly intends to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, but "he says a lot, depends on what he drinks or smokes." Lavrov said: “Ask Mr. Zelenskyy. We never mentioned about this. He mentioned this, so his intelligence must have provided him with some news. I cannot comment [on] something which a not very adequate person pronounces.”