An unhinged Putin threatens the use of nukes, the safety of the ISS and worldwide destruction
Putin’s unhinged appearances and apparent drive to war have raised questions of just how rational a leader is Putin.
With Russian troops unable to advance effectively against a combined force of Ukraine military and civilians fighters, a frustrated and quite possible insane Vladimir Putin put his nuclear forced on high alert Sunday. (Photo: David Schlobovarsky/Kyiv Independent) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Vladimir Putin is rapidly proving himself to be insane and dangerous. Early Sunday, he ordered his military command to put nuclear forces on high alert as Ukrainian fighters defending the city of Kharkiv said they had repelled an attack by invading Russian troops.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that “President Putin is continuing to escalate this war in a manner that is totally unacceptable and we have to continue to stem his actions in the strongest possible way.”
On the fourth day of the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two, the Ukrainian president’s office said negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow would be held at the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. They would meet without preconditions, it said.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians, mainly women and children, were fleeing from the Russian assault into neighboring countries, most of them headed to Poland which said Friday that “any and all” Ukrainian refugees would be welcomed.. The rest of Europe, too, was preparing to receive tens of thousands of refugees form the embattled nation.
The capital Kyiv is still in Ukrainian government hands at this writing on Sunday afternoon in the U.S. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy continues rallying his people despite Russian shelling of civilian infrastructure. He has been posting at least one video a day in front of a Kyiv landmark to prove the Russians are spreading lies in claiming he has fled the country. Saturday, he said, “We are not going anywhere.”
But Putin, who has described the invasion as a “special military operation,” thrust an alarming new element into play on Sunday with the order to put Russia’s nuclear weapons on high alert. Putin claimed NATO leaders and international sanctions are essentially “acts of war.”
“As you can see,” Putin said, “not only do Western countries take unfriendly measures against our country in the economic dimension ― I mean the illegal sanctions that everyone knows about very well ― but also the top officials of leading NATO countries allow themselves to make aggressive statements with regards to our country.”
NATO countries, including the United States, have pledged not to send troops into Ukraine, but they’ve also maintained a commitment to defend member nations from any Russian advance or any aggressive action aimed at NATO nations. That may include cyberattacks designed to prevent outside communication with Ukraine.
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to that possibility Saturday by activating StarLink satellites serving Ukraine. StarLink is the satellite system SpaceX has launched over the last 18 months primarily to provide high-speed internet access to rural areas and underdeveloped countries around the world.
The nuclear threat, obviously, is far greater, though it isn’t the only threat Putin made to which Musk responded over the weekend.
Russian space agency head Dimitry Rogozin had taken to Twitter Saturday amidst the widely condemned Russian invasion of Ukraine to warn that Russian expertise and technology would be necessary to keep the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit and prevent it from crashing down. The implication was that Russia would stop cooperating with other nations of the world committed to the ISS, allowing it to fall on the U.S. or Europe.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded to Russia’s threat to the ISS by saying he would save it from destruction, posting a photo with the Russian segment, and a SpaceX Dragon attached instead in its place.. (Photo Illustration: Neil Brashear/Daily Mail) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rogozin claimed the ISS does not pass over Russia, so they would have no worries about being the victim of their own passive sabotage. The ISS does orbit over China, however, and it is doubtful Putin would want to risk destroying his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Elon Musk said his company SpaceX will rescue the International Space Station if Russia attempts to drop it from orbit after threats by Putin's space chief. Musk had just hour before announced the activation of his Starlink satellites to guarantee internet access for the embattled people of Ukraine.
“If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the 0United States and Europe?” Rogozin tweeted on Friday.
Musk responded: “SpaceX.”
When a Twitter user asked the billionaire if this meant SpaceX would keep the ISS from falling onto Earth, Musk replied in the affirmative.
“'Yes,” Musk tweeted in response.
The head of Tesla and SpaceX also replied to another tweet, which depicted the ISS without the Russian segment, and a SpaceX Dragon attached instead in its place.
The nuclear threat is the most troubling. Russia had about 6,850 nuclear warheads as of 2017, the most of any nation in the world. The United States comes in a close second, with 6,185 as of 2018. Outside of testing, atomic weapons have only been used once in warfare, in August 1945, when the U.S. dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, leading to the nearly-unconditional Japanese surrender.
After Putin's remarks, Russia's nuclear weapons were set to be prepared for increased readiness for a possible launch.
Last week, the Russian president also warned countries that interfere with Russian actions will face "consequences you have never seen."
Since the invasion, the U.S. and its allies have imposed sanctions including kicking certain Russian banks out of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). Critics of Joe Biden has said all of Russia should be cut off from SWIFT. Allied nations have also committed to certain measures that prevent the Russian Central Bank from undermining sanctions and boosting the ruble by using its reserves.
"We stand with the Ukrainian people in this dark hour. Even beyond the measures we are announcing today, we are prepared to take further measures to hold Russia to account for its attack on Ukraine," a joint statement from the U.S. and its allies said at the time.
Sunday’s action of putting the nuclear forces on high alert followed a television appearance by Putin Friday night. Looking dead-eyed into the camera on Friday, Putin gave one of the most bizarre speeches of his 22 years as Russia’s leader, a directive that managed to sound alarming even in a week when he has ordered tanks into Ukraine and missile strikes on Kyiv.
A deranged Putin claims that in Ukraine, he is fighting "drug addicts, Nazis and Banderites," who he says are following the directives of American instructors. Meanwhile, he is hunting down Ukraine's Jewish president and seeking to destroy the largest democratic country in Europe. (Screen Capture: RT Television) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Once again I speak to the Ukrainian soldiers,” he said, addressing his enemy. “Do not allow neo-Nazis and Banderites [a term for members and supporters of the faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, led in the ‘40s and ‘50s by Stepan Bandera, in opposition to the Soviet occupation of Ukraine] to use your children, your wives and the elderly as a human shield. Take power into your own hands. It seems that it will be easier for us to come to an agreement than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”
The speech seemed to be ripped from an alternate reality ― or from World War II, where Putin appears to be spending more of his historical study time as he launches the kind of broad military offensive not seen in Europe for nearly 70 years.
All this week, Putin’s megalomaniacal tendencies have been on display like never before. He has summoned his aides for a surreal national security council meeting that resembled a television reality show during which Putin launched tirades about Lenin and decisions made nearly 100 years ago.
He has also, for the first time, spoken about his maximalist goals in this war: Regime change in Kyiv, toppling the government of Volodymyr Zelenskiy and replacing it with a more Putin-friendly pliant leadership. Putin’s call for a coup in Kyiv indicates that if Russia wins this war, Zelenskiy will almost certainly not remain in power. How Putin will achieve his goals is every murkier as the resistance by the Ukrainian military and civilians slows the Russian advance at every key point of the invasion.
A number of analysts predicted this as Russia deployed more than 60 percent of its ground forces to Ukraine’s borders and demanded concessions that could never be granted.
But Putin’s unhinged appearances and apparent drive to war have raised questions of just how rational a leader is Putin.
“Despite Crimea and everything else, Putin had always seemed an extremely pragmatic leader to me,” said Tatyana Stanovaya, the founder of R.Politik, a political analysis firm. “But now when he’s gone in this war against Ukraine, the logic in the decision is all about emotions, it’s not rational.”
Those emotions are deeply rooted in history and the historical injustices suffered by Russia. Dmitry Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta, said he saw Putin as a man with “a historical map in his mind and a plan to use his military to achieve it.”
Central to that map is Ukraine, which Putin has described as an artificial state. “Modern Ukraine was wholly and fully created by Russia,” Putin said in a historical sleight-of-hand during a February 20 speech, “namely Bolshevik, communist Russia.”
To help picture it, Russian state TV ran a map earlier this week showing Ukraine cut up to represent which parts were “presents” from various leaders, including Stalin, Lenin and Khrushchev. Some commentators said it represents the partition that Putin himself might be imagining if he gets his way.
Once the map would have been viewed as a fantasy or media trolling. A Western diplomat based in Ukraine on Friday pointed to Putin’s speeches this week and to that map as a serious sign that Putin was weighing the possibility of dismantling Ukraine.
“He is not pretending any more. For the first time I think he’s revealing who he really is,” the diplomat wrote.
Putin’s insanity is not new. It has just been held in check, particularly during the years President Trump was in office. Many a talking head on cable news networks, liberal and conservative, have said this past week that, were Trump still president, this wouldn’t be happening.
Putin has been emboldened by an even more incompetent Joe Biden, whose dementia and general stupidity regarding foreign affairs is well-documented. No doubt the Russian president took as a blessing Biden’s belched-out utter nonsense on January 19 when he said, “It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we [NATO] end up having to fight about we have to do and not do.”
For unhinged Russian leader, such an utterance by a fool for whom he holds no respect whatsoever would be an invitation to carry out his worst plans.
The confrontation of a madman and an incompetent fool never ends well. When the two are major world leaders, that end will encompass all of us.
Mike Nichols is an advocate of the counterrevolution with a four-step plan to defeat Leftist Fascism: We Organize. We Stand. We Resist. We Fight. He is a regular contributor to several conservative news websites and has a regular blog and Facebook presence at Americas Conservative Voice-Facebook.