At the battle of Stirling Bridge, 11 September 1297, the movie Braveheart has William Wallace provoking the English to battle, saying "Here are Scotland's terms. Lower your flags, and march straight back to England, stopping at every home to beg forgiveness for 100 years of theft, rape, and murder. Do that and your men shall live. Do it not, and every one of you will die today. ... Before we let you leave, your commander must cross that field, present himself before this army, put his head between his legs, and kiss his own ass."

Putin's Nuclear Crisis - September 2023

The head of Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos announced on 01 September 2023 the deployment of the country's new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles for "combat duty." Yuri Borisov, a close aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, announced the deployment of the ICBMs capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads. Putin earlier indicated Sarmat ICBMs would be deployed this year. His administration appears to be aiming at keeping in check the United States, which is increasing its military assistance to Ukraine, by displaying Russia's nuclear capabilities.

General Rajmund T. Andrzejczak, Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, spoke 05 September 2023 at the Karpacz Economic Forum in Poland, an annual international meeting of economic and political leaders. brings together more than 4000 of the most important people in the region, including leaders in politics, the economy, local government, culture, and science.

Andrzejczak urged his audience to think of the long-term cost of Ukraine’s possible military defeat. Recalling to the innumrable Russian threats to use nuclear weapons, Andrzejczak likened Russia to a gangster bringing guns to the table. He said: “It looks like we are dealing with the gangsters, crazy bad boys. Everyone has gone to the park smoking cigars, the gangsters are putting guns on the table and we are in panama T-shirts and saying: ‘Well, I have got a gun, but I left mine at home, and my wife does not like the word.’

“Nato is a nuclear treaty organisation; it should be much more proactive and stronger to the Russians. In the 70s and 80s, 30% of B-52 bombers were flying permanently and had nuclear weapons with pilots ready to act. Today we have a challenge to say the word B61 [the primary US thermonuclear gravity bomb], so let us change narratives.

“What is wrong with us? Russia is still the same and we have a situation in a neighbouring country where Russia is saying publicly it is putting nuclear systems in Belarus and what are we doing in our panama T-shirt? I don’t want to escalate too much, but what is wrong with our vocabulary? Nato is a nuclear organisation. Full stop.”

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó on 22 September 2023 called “unambiguous references to nuclear potential” shameful and dangerous. "The conflict in Ukraine is a serious threat to global security, given that one side is a nuclear power and the other side is supported by another nuclear power. We must do everything in our power to avoid a direct clash between these nuclear powers, because in the event of such a collision, a third world war could break out. <...> And I think that all UN participants agree on this, who would like to avoid such a development of events. In particular, explicit references to nuclear potential are extremely shameful, and we consider them extremely dangerous. We know that the deployment and use of nuclear weapons could lead to the end of humanity," Szijjártó said at a conference on the implementation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov previously noted that Western leaders daily practice nuclear rhetoric, and emphasized that Russia does not want to take part in these exercises. Peskov also reminded that Moscow can use nuclear weapons only in accordance with the provisions of its nuclear doctrine.

Russia significantly increased construction at a remote Arctic island location where Soviet nuclear tests were conducted, new satellite imagery shows, suggesting Moscow may be intending to resume tests. Annotated images obtained by the Middlebury Institute for International Studies and shared with RFE/RL September 25, 2023 showed a number of new facilities and construction equipment on Novaya Zemlya, an island archipelago located in the northern Barents Sea. A comparison of imagery taken in July 2021 and in June 2023, showed large trucks, shipping containers, construction cranes, and building supplies at a settlement in Novaya Zemlya called Severny, according to the analysis by the Middlebury Institute, located in Monterey, California.

The activity appears to be aimed at least two new buildings, including what will be the location's largest. Such a pace of construction at the site has not been seen "since the end of nuclear testing in the 1990s," the institute said, and may indicate Russia plans to expand personnel there or operate it year-round.

Sergei Karaganov, the honorary chairman of the presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, published an article in the magazine "Russia in Global Affairs". Karaganov stated "The main sources of threat are the moral, political, intellectual, social, economic multi-level crisis of the overwhelming part of the collective West, which has dominated and imposed its interests and orders over the past five centuries. The most powerful redistribution of world forces in history in terms of intensity and speed is underway. The West went into a desperate “last battle” in order to maintain its dominant position, which allowed it to rob the rest of humanity and suppress other civilizations....

"It is necessary now to put a political and psychological barrier on the way of their escalation to the military level, to restore the fear of nuclear war, which saved the world during the period of intense rivalry during the Cold War. The structure of rivalry in a multipolar world, and it will also be nuclear multipolar, will be much more complex. We need to insert fuses into these systems now. And the main thing is the fear of nuclear Armageddon, which restrains and civilizes the elite....

"[Russia] finally gave battle to the USA /West. But for now we gave them the initiative in escalation. And they are constantly expanding and deepening their aggression, supplying ever more deadly and dangerous weapons. For now, we allow them to convince themselves that escalation is not punishable. They are the aggressors. But by not setting a hard limit for them, we pacify them.

"We unwittingly contributed to the growth of Western aggressiveness with our nuclear doctrine - it carelessly, if not recklessly, raised the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. And the Americans and their vassals are parasitizing on this: they have unleashed and are waging a big war against a great nuclear power, which previously seemed unthinkable.....

"I don’t yet see a way to achieve this without awakening in the West and in the world elites in general a sense of self-preservation - except through an increase in the nuclear threat. Hopefully, without implementing it to the end. But the enemy must know about the unconditional readiness of our leadership and society to take this step in case of emergency. We need to restore faith in hell to those who have lost it....

"... if nuclear weapons have to be used (God forbid!), the strike must be quite massive. If nuclear weapons are used on a minimal scale and with a yield of several kilotons, then the war can be won, but the horror of them that has maintained relative peace for three quarters of a century will be destroyed. Nuclear weapons will become "usable." I know that not only I, but also some colleagues in the West feared a limited exchange of nuclear strikes between India and Pakistan in this context . The world would not have collapsed, and the sacred fear of nuclear weapons would have disappeared. Applying it to Europe , given its still key role in the global media agenda, would restore such fear. But, I repeat: God forbid, and I pray that it will not be necessary to use the weapon of God to bring to reason those who have lost it."