Tag Archives: nuclear threat

Moscow’s Crimean Military and Nuclear Shell Game

21 Sunday May 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Ukraine

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Today:

http://uaposition.com/latest-news/russia-deploys-nuclear-warheads-crimea/ – 5/21/2017

Note and update 5/22/2017: BackChannels has trusted UA Position but hasn’t seen second source corroboration on the Crimea story.  Source seems to be Crimean Tatar via

http://news.liga.net/news/politics/14754659-dzhemilev_rossiya_razmestila_v_krymu_shest_yadernykh_boegolovok.htm – 5/20/2017.

Related by Euromaidan Press and published in April 2017:

An alarmist announcement in one publication associated with the justifiable want of sympathy in the maw of an invading force encourages doubt; however, as noted immediately below and in patched-in sections, open source headlines and reports suggest Russia has been revitalizing once abandoned Cold War Era assets in Crimea.

Within the past year:

June 2016: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-threatens-deploy-nuclear-weapons-crimea-13013

June 2016: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-europe-shield-idUSKCN0Z90WT

November 2016: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/727788/Russia-Vladimir-Putin-Crimea-missile-bunkers-Soviet-Cold-War-global-attack-Nato-Ukraine – “Putin renovates Cold War Missile Bunkers in Crimea as Russia prepares for global assault.”

April 29, 2017: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/russia-weighs-heavily-in-americas-nuclear-plans/article/2621340

May 1, 2017: http://www.newsweek.com/stephen-blank-europeans-should-wake-russia-war-them-590408

May 5, 2017: http://www.newsweek.com/why-russia-nuclear-capable-bombers-flight-near-alaska-595256

Again: has Moscow really planted nuclear missiles in Crimea?

This note comes from the Federation of American Scientists and comments on similar web claims dating back to 2014:

The news media and private web sites are full of rumors that Russia has deployed nuclear weapons to Crimea after it invaded the region earlier this year. Many of these rumors are dubious and overly alarmist and ignore that a nuclear-capable weapon is not the same as a nuclear warhead.

Several U.S. lawmakers who oppose nuclear arms control use the Crimean deployment to argue against further reductions of nuclear weapons. NATO’s top commander, U.S. General Philip Breedlove, has confirmed that Russian forces “capable of being nuclear” are being moved to the Crimean Peninsula, but also acknowledged that NATO doesn’t know if nuclear warheads are actually in place.

Kristensen, Hans M.  “Rumors About Nuclear Weapons in Crimea.”  FAS, December 18, 2014.

Nuclear arms agreements may have comfort the public of an earlier day, but ambiguity would seem to bedevil the field.

From BackChannels’ open source perspective, there are no authoritative or official sources or statements.  What appears in the chronologically ordered headlines, however, suggests a course in the redevelopment of Cold War Era military facilities.

Additional reference:

Gertz, Bill.  “Russia Building New Underground Nuclear Command Posts: U.S. intelligence detects dozens of hardened bunkers for leaders.”  Free Beacon, August 15, 2016.

A few twists and turns further and the driver pulled over to the side of the road. He was saying something about a monastery, and pointing to a series of blue roofs that rose up above the trees ahead of us. Presumably, it was the only viable tourist destination that he could think of in this vicinity. He seemed friendly enough, so I risked blowing our cover – leaning forward to say, “Objekt Dva-Dva-Adin.”

Our driver laughed, repeated the name of the colossal ruin, once a well kept military secret, and turned the car around.

The Bohemian Blog.  “Inside Objekt 221: An Abandoned Soviet Stronghold in the Crimea.”  June 4, 2015.

It is a functioning military base with an anti-ship missile system,” the villager told a Reuters reporter who visited the area in July.

The bunkers are just one small part of a new Russian programme to militarise the Crimean peninsula. Based on recent site observations by Reuters, accounts from locals, media reports and official Russian data, Moscow has reanimated multiple Soviet-built facilities in the region, built new bases and stationed soldiers there

Reuters.  “In Crimea, Russia signals military resolve with new and revamped bases.”  November 1, 2016.

Related: Scandinavian Defense

I had started this separate post last night, but as things may move fast in Crimea and Syria — readers may wish also to take a look at Russia’s cash position as regards funding its aggression and barbarism against the autonomous, democratic, or western-leaning states of its surrounding world — this brief referencing may as well ride along on the same because, essentially, the material is about the same thing: Moscow’s brandishing its biggest gun, i.e., the threat of nuclear exchange and all that may follow it.

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/10/washington-quietly-reinforcing-europes-northern-flank/132656/ – 10/26/2016

http://www.sldinfo.com/the-challenge-of-shaping-a-21st-century-integrated-force-for-the-extended-defense-of-norway-the-perspective-of-lt-general-rune-jakobsen/ – 2/16/2017.

https://www.newsbytesapp.com/timeline/World/6909/41038/russia-threat-us-plans-additional-deployments-in-baltic – 5/12/2017.

http://www.businessinsider.com/finland-norway-sweden-b-52-air-force-russia-ace-17-2017-5 – 5/19/2017.

https://toinformistoinfluence.com/2017/05/20/finland-norway-and-sweden-are-conducting-a-massive-air-exercise-amid-russia-tensions/ – 5/20/2017.

Related: Libya: Moscow Naval Launch Exercises

https://www.middleeastobserver.org/2017/05/18/what-is-russia-planning-to-do-off-libyas-eastern-coast-next-week/ – 5/18/2017.

https://www.rbth.com/defence/2017/05/19/russia-set-to-test-its-cruise-missiles-near-libyas-coasts_765511 – 5/19/2017.

Chess pieces, demonstrations, exercises, sales, and threats — there’s a mix of prudence and evil that seeps down into the economies of all Big Defense Production states, but Moscow has placed itself in the desperate position of wanting to produce a primary defense industry even while Russians suffer from the funds siphoned away for its foreign ambitions and apparently natural kleptocratic tendencies.

Related: General Russian Defense Industry

Putin is allocating unprecedented amounts of secret funds to accelerate Russia’s largest military buildup since the Cold War, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The part of the federal budget that is so-called black — authorized but not itemized — has doubled since 2010 to 21 percent and now totals 3.2 trillion rubles ($60 billion), the Gaidar Institute, an independent think tank in Moscow, estimates.

Stung by sanctions over Ukraine and oil’s plunge, Putin is turning to defense spending to revive a shrinking economy. The outlays on new tanks, missiles and uniforms highlight the growing militarization that is swelling the deficit and crowding out services such as health care. Thousands of army conscripts will be moved into commercial enterprises for the first time to aid in the rearmament effort.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/06/03/world/putins-black-budget-hides-shift-toward-war-economy-defence-security-absorb-34-spending/#.WSG-YtQrJlY – 6/3/2015

http://carnegieendowment.org/2017/05/03/assessing-russia-s-reorganized-and-rearmed-military-pub-69853 – 5/3/2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_industry_of_Russia

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Russia’s Nuclear Scarum

16 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia

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Having rebuilt a small medieval world in Russia, President Putin has backed himself into his own paranoid corner as regards the “active measures” he has taken against the entire Russian constituency, which he has sewn up with state-controlled misinformation about western behavior.

Veteran nuclear defense analyst Jeffrey Lewis had this to say in Foreign Policy back in August:

Titter has been aflame with reports that the United States is moving the few dozen nuclear weapons stored at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey to Deveselu military base in Romania. I am calling bullshit on this one — but it’s bullshit in a telling way.

It’s most likely Russian propaganda, all part of an elaborate strategy to build opposition to U.S. missile defense efforts and deflect criticism of Moscow for violating arms control treaties. This is a particularly irritating manifestation of the bullshit asymmetry principle: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

Lewis, Jeffrey.  “Russia’s Nuclear Paranoia Fuels Its Nuclear Propaganda.”  Foreign Policy, August 22, 2016.

Earlier this year:

For Russia, the Cold War had never simply disappeared. It had resulted in defeat and the loss of empire, leaving Russia’s rival of more than 40 years to dictate the terms of peace in Europe. By the time Putin took power in 2000, the only vestige of his country’s superpower status was its nuclear arsenal, which was still the biggest in the world. So he began to use it as a crutch.

“Even in the darkest days of the Russian military, when they weren’t able to afford to pay their soldiers and fly their airplanes, they paid close attention to the readiness and modernization of their nuclear forces,” says David Ochmanek, who served as a U.S. Air Force officer during the Cold War and, between 2009 and 2014, was the Pentagon’s top official for force development. “Their doctrine reflected this,” he says.

Shuster, Simon.  “Why Russia is Rebuilding Its Nuclear Arsenal.”  Time, April 4, 2016.

Back to the moment:

Nuclear proliferation destabilizes the equilibrium of mutually assured destruction. In a multipolar nuclear world, in which many countries have a few nukes and threaten to use them, the possibility of a “limited” nuclear war—one in which all of civilization is not obliterated—begins, for some people, to appear feasible. The truth, however, is that there’s no such thing as limited use of nuclear weapons. Retaliation and escalation are extremely likely.

Krauss, Lawrence M.  “The Real Nuclear Threat.”  The New Yorker, October 13, 2016.

Cogent and published the day after the previous excerpt:

Grievances against the West and predictions of militaristic doom are not new in Russia—they have run through all sixteen years of Vladimir Putin’s rule. But they took on a heightened intensity in early 2014, after Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and the U.S. sanctions that followed. Suddenly the question of war was in the air in Moscow. If nothing else, the spectre of a conflict with Washington served as retroactive justification for the Kremlin’s policies, and a ready-made excuse for why the Russian economy had sunk into recession. At home, Russia’s ostracization was spun as a sign of its righteousness.

Yaffa, Joshua.  “Putin, Syria, and Why Moscow has Gone War-Crazy.”  The New Yorker, October 14, 2016.

Political theater?  “Theater of the Real”?  Political Theater of the Absurd?

“A Russian takes a long time to harness a horse, but then rides fast,” said the news anchor, quoting a famous Russian saying.

By “riding fast”, Kiselyov was referring to a string of recent Russian military deployments:

  • Last week, Moscow sent three warships from the Black Sea Fleet to the Mediterranean: on board, cruise missiles that can carry nuclear warheads
  • Russia deployed nuclear-capable Iskander-M missiles into the Kaliningrad region bordering Poland
  • Russia announced it would send several hundred paratroopers to Egypt for military exercises
  • Moscow also suspended three nuclear agreements with the United States

Rosenberg, Steve.  “Russia’s top spin doctor in nuclear warning.”  BBC News, October 10, 2016.

As he has done in Syria, which damage so far has been largely contained in Syria and spilled out primarily in mass migration to the west, Putin and Company may well produce a complete medieval and totalitarian theater of politics and war by way of the state’s central control of media and the manipulation of what appears on the surface of so much turmoil.

There has been talk this week, already, of a “CIA cyber retaliation” against Russia in reprisal for meddling with the American election. May it be accompanied by the transferring into the former Soviet Union higher-integrity news coverage and analysis in Russian.

Addendum – Additional Reference

Lockie, Alex.  “How the US’s nuclear weapons compare to Russia’s.”  Business Insider, September 28, 2016.

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