Article

2022-10-11 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Russian Nuclear Attack. How Would the West Respond?

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by DarthVader 2022-10-11 00:00|| || Front Page|| [9 views ] Top

#1 Biden will crap his diaper and go on TV to tell the world that Puty is a bad bad man. Shame on him. Then he'll leave via the wrong exit and get found wandering around the white house lawn 8 hours later.

Posted by Silentbrick 2022-10-11 02:37|| 2022-10-11 02:37|| Front Page Top

#2 I've got an idea: let's not wait for this to happen, but pre-emptively attack them instead! After all, Putler is a madman who invaded Ukraine completely unprovoked, just because he is evil and likes to tie maidens to train tracks and twirl his moustache. Let the nukes fly now! Don't think of what the consequences might be!

Posted by Spike the Hairy6811 2022-10-11 03:22|| 2022-10-11 03:22|| Front Page Top

#3 Just before the midterms. Declare a national emergency and cancel all elections. Timing is everything.

Posted by Besoeker 2022-10-11 06:10|| 2022-10-11 06:10|| Front Page Top

#4 Well, if the president were a republican, we could make bank on the fact that the dems would try to him impeach him over a Russian attack.

Posted by M. Murcek 2022-10-11 07:50|| 2022-10-11 07:50|| Front Page Top

#5 That might be a tough sell, even in these dicked-up times. Assuming RUS tac nukes UKR. How is that an "emergency" for the US?

But, shite, nothing would surprise me anymore.

Posted by DooDahMan 2022-10-11 07:55|| 2022-10-11 07:55|| Front Page Top

#6 Just ask yourself "What would Susan Rice do?". There's your answer.

Posted by Mercutio 2022-10-11 08:37|| 2022-10-11 08:37|| Front Page Top

#7 Do or do not. What's going to happen will be a very rapid escalation of countries with nukes for their own sovereign security. No reliance upon 'others' for your protection. Suddenly, you have several dozen states with nukes. What could go wrong? Then its just a short matter of time when they start popping all over the place. You don't game escalation because if you are last you are toast.

Posted by Procopius2k 2022-10-11 08:38|| 2022-10-11 08:38|| Front Page Top

#8 How?
Poorly.

Posted by Skidmark 2022-10-11 11:06|| 2022-10-11 11:06|| Front Page Top

#9 I think we could catch the Ruskies with their pants down! Do I need a /sarc tag here?

Posted by Abu Uluque 2022-10-11 12:03|| 2022-10-11 12:03|| Front Page Top

#10 I don't want to walk through the escalation ladder. I want to somehow get it through Joe Biden's head that Donbas and Crimea are not worth it. I want American foreign policy makers to understand that every little conflict in the world does not have to involve Americans.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2022-10-11 12:19|| 2022-10-11 12:19|| Front Page Top

#11 Locally, those who were flying the Ukraine and semaphore "K" flags have them down, with some replaced by college sportsball flags.

Yes. The Stand with Ukraine or Die people in my circle are more concerned with a 20 year old being able to throw a ball against 3-4 defense.

Posted by swksvolFF 2022-10-11 12:47|| 2022-10-11 12:47|| Front Page Top

#12 Trump to Biden: Prevent World War III by Starting Peace Talks in Ukraine

Posted by Abu Uluque 2022-10-11 13:16|| 2022-10-11 13:16|| Front Page Top

#13 Russia is finally starting to pursue the war in earnest. A new badass commander (Suvorikin) and the launch of Shock & Awe.

Shock’n Awe will likely progress in three stages.

First: Overload of the Ukrainian air defense system (already on).

Second: Plunging Ukraine into the Dark Ages (already in progress).

Third: Destruction of all major military installations (the next wave).

Ukraine is about to embrace nearly total darkness in the next few days. Politically, that opens a completely new ball game. Considering Moscow’s trademark “strategic ambiguity,” this could be a sort of Desert Storm remixed (massive air strikes preparing a ground offensive); or, more likely, an ‘incentive’ to force NATO to negotiate; or just a relentless, systematic missile offensive mixed with Electronic Warfare (EW) to shatter for good Kiev’s capacity to wage war.

Or it could be all of the above.

Posted by Palermo 2022-10-11 13:29|| 2022-10-11 13:29|| Front Page Top

#14 Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin said yesterday the way out of this conflict is for Russians to leave Ukraine. By that she seems to assume that Ukraine's borders are not in dispute which ignores the low level war that has been fought in eastern Ukraine since the Maidan coup in 2014, a coup in which the American State Department is implicated. Also ignored is the status of Crimea which Catherine the Great won for Russia, not Ukraine, in 1783. Further, she ignores Putin's concern about NATO's continued movement to the east and the threat it poses to Russia's security.

Being as how she is so much closer to the situation than we are, it's surprising that she would ignore pertinent facts that way.

Nonetheless, the question is: Are you willing to negotiate these issues in the interest of peace or do you believe these far away places about which we know so little are worth risking nuclear war?

Posted by Abu Uluque 2022-10-11 13:54|| 2022-10-11 13:54|| Front Page Top

#15 Why would Russia use nukes unless it was in response to NATO aggression.

I dont see a scenario where UKR by itself is going to threaten RUS to such an extent that the only option is nuclear.

The real question is: How will the West respond to Russia using nukes in response to NATO escalation in UKR.

Posted by mossomo 2022-10-11 14:11|| 2022-10-11 14:11|| Front Page Top

#16 https://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2022/10/want-nuke-wargame-ive-got-one-for-you.html

Posted by James 2022-10-11 14:35|| https://idontknowbut.blogspot.com 2022-10-11 14:35|| Front Page Top

#17 I could see Putin using tactical nukes in defense of Crimea should Ukrainian forces fight their way onto the peninsula. I would hate to see it. I worry that he might get pushed to that point because his conventional forces are so weak. I would prefer that he submit to defeat because the escalation from that point could be catastrophic for the whole world. But he might feel like he has no other option. I would assign the blame equally between Putin and Biden. If we were to find that Biden really has deployed American CIA or spec op forces in Ukraine, I would blame Biden exclusively because that would be naked aggression against Russia on his part. Even without that, I believe it is criminally insane that Biden continues to fan the flames of this war instead of proposing negotiations.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2022-10-11 14:40|| 2022-10-11 14:40|| Front Page Top

#18 If we were to find that Biden really has deployed American CIA or spec op forces in Ukraine, I would blame Biden exclusively because that would be naked aggression against Russia on his part.

Russian intel has traced the Krymsky Most / Crimea Bridge bombing to UK Mi6 special operatives in Bulgaria. A step-by-step accounting of who-what-when-where:

Russian President Vladimir Putin neatly summarized it: “This is a terrorist attack aimed at destroying the critical civilian infrastructure of the Russian Federation.”

The head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, confirmed face-to-face with Putin that Terror on the Bridge was carried out by the SBU – Ukrainian special services.

Bastrykin told Putin, “we have already established the route of the truck, where the explosion took place. Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia, Krasnodar… The carriers have been identified. With the help of operatives of the FSB, we managed to identify suspects.”

Russian intel leaked crucial info to military correspondent Alexander Kots. The cargo was ordered by a Ukrainian citizen: explosives packed in 22 pallets, in rolls of film under plastic wrap, were shipped from Bulgaria to the Georgian port of Poti. Afterwards, the cargo was loaded onto a truck with foreign license plates and proceeded overland to Armenia.

Clearance at the Armenia-Russia border was smooth – according to the rules of the Eurasian Customs Union (both Russia and Armenia are members of the Eurasian Economic Union, or EAEU). The cargo evidently avoided detection through X-rays. This route is standard for truckers traveling to Russia.

The truck then re-entered Georgia and crossed the border into Russia again, but this time through the Upper Lars checkpoint. The truck ended up in Armavir, where the cargo was transferred to another truck, under the responsibility of Mahir Yusubov: the one that entered the Crimean bridge coming from the Russian mainland.

Very important: the transport from Armavir to a delivery address in Simferopol should have happened on October 6-7: that is, timed to the birthday of President Putin on Friday the 7th. For some unexplained reason, that was postponed for a day.

The driver of the first truck is already testifying. Yusubov, the driver of the second truck – which exploded on the bridge – was “blind:” he had no idea what he was carrying, and is dead.

At this stage, two conclusions are paramount.

First: This was not a standard ISIS-style truck suicide bombing – the preferred interpretation in the aftermath of the terror attack.

Second: The packaging most certainly took place in Bulgaria. That, as Russian intel has cryptically implied, indicates the involvement of “foreign special services.”

…

[Ultimately,] damage [to the bridge] was limited, and easily contained. The charges/truck combo exploded on the outer right lane of the road. Damage was only on two sections of the outer lane, and not much on the railway bridge.

In the end, Terror on the Bridge yielded a short, Pyrrhic PR victory – duly celebrated across the collective West – with negligible practical success: transfer of Russian military cargo by railway resumed in roughly 14 hours.

And that brings us to the key information in the Russian intel source assessment: the whodunnit.

It was a plan by the British MI6, says this source, without offering further details. Which, he elaborates, Russian intel, for a number of reasons, is shadow-playing as “foreign special services.”

It’s quite telling that the Americans rushed to establish plausible deniability. The proverbial “Ukrainian government official” told CIA mouthpiece The Washington Post that the SBU did it.

Posted by Palermo 2022-10-11 15:01|| 2022-10-11 15:01|| Front Page Top

#19 Nice try, old Pal, but I have it straight from Herself that the Queen o' da Jooz arranged to substitute boomy stuff for a truckload of humanitarian aid from Kadyrov and set it off with a Ouija board at just the opportune second. Much more plausible, don't you think?

Posted by Aspiring Rapper 2022-10-11 15:28|| 2022-10-11 15:28|| Front Page Top

#20 Abu,

Biden has indeed “deployed special operations forces to Ukraine.”

Helmholtz quoted a report from Col. Cassad two days ago:

Today there was a sortie of foreign mercenaries in the Zaporozhye direction, which included, among other things, American special forces soldiers. They were so self-confident that they decided to carry out reconnaissance in battle with this stellar squadron.

However, they did not take into account the presence of our units in this zone, which are able to maintain secrecy on the air, and suffered losses. However, some of these bastards still managed to escape. The presented photos are screenshots of the video from the go-pro camera of one of the dead mercenaries, who literally lost his head.

Posted by Palermo 2022-10-11 15:44|| 2022-10-11 15:44|| Front Page Top

#21 Ref 18: Palermo's comments are most plausible. Persistent (sat or air breather) surveillance of key strategic nodes is a given. All that is required is a reverse viewing of the FMV (full motion video). Tracking events and vehicles 'before the boom.'

Posted by Besoeker 2022-10-11 16:11|| 2022-10-11 16:11|| Front Page Top

#22 Too bad Ukraine doesn't have any of their own. Doubt Putin would trade Moscow for Kiev.

Posted by Angstrom 2022-10-11 18:23|| 2022-10-11 18:23|| Front Page Top

#23 Far too many moving parts and points of failure, leakage, and a lack of cutoff, not to mention a completely inadequate destructive capability. Mi6 or CIA would have known they needed a bigger bang to actually impact things in a serious manner. As you note, this was just an anoyance.

Nice fiction if you're writing a Tom Clancy novel, Palermo, but Occams Razor says a lot more likely to have a simpler solution than the cockamamie conspiracy you outline. Citations please, not just innuendo and allegations.

Posted by Chealing Chomotle4158 2022-10-11 21:20|| 2022-10-11 21:20|| Front Page Top

#24 You’d be lucky to get anyone innuendo, Sailor

Posted by Palermo 2022-10-11 21:40|| 2022-10-11 21:40|| Front Page Top

#25 … or anything

Posted by Palermo 2022-10-11 21:42|| 2022-10-11 21:42|| Front Page Top

23:48 Richard Aubrey
23:47 Richard Aubrey
23:45 Richard Aubrey
23:43 Skidmark
23:07 trailing wife
23:05 trailing wife
22:58 trailing wife
22:46 CrazyFool
22:35 trailing wife
22:30 DarthVader
22:29 DarthVader
22:02 Jan
21:42 Palermo
21:40 Palermo
21:29 Glaviper Thud8267
21:22 Chealing Chomotle4158
21:20 Chealing Chomotle4158
21:14 lord garth
21:07 Chealing Chomotle4158
19:47 Silentbrick
19:37 Omuth Cleasing7979
19:32 Frank G
19:20 Lowspark
19:20 Mercutio