Russian media has shown a chilling sequence of mushroom clouds ‘in anticipation of nuclear conflict’ amid calls for Putin to ‘take drastic measures to win in Ukraine. Sinister footage aired by NTV highlighted nuclear explosions and the ‘Armageddon’ aftermath. The slavish channel is owned by the media wing of Gazprom, the Kremlin-obedient energy giant which is now starving the West of Russian gas for the coming winter.
The sequence was titled: ‘In anticipation of nuclear conflict – how weapons of mass destruction have become part of the geopolitical game.’ It comes as a top Putin lieutenant Ramzan Kadyrov – the leader of Chechnya and a war fanatic – called on Putin to contemplate ‘declaring martial law in the border territories and using low-yield nuclear weapons to overcome his latest military humiliations in Ukraine.
‘I do not know what the Defence Ministry reports to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief [Putin], but in my personal opinion, we need to take more drastic measures,’ he said. Lt Kadyrov complained that Putin’s commanders had failed to rout Ukraine’s supposed ‘Satanists and fascists’.
The TV sequence blamed the West for too much talk of nuclear war, when it is Putin’s acolytes and propagandists – plus the Kremlin leader himself – who are constantly floating the threat of atomic apocalypse. The message appeared to be that the West should cave into Putin’s demands on Ukraine and the threat of nuclear war would diminish.
‘We’re in a situation in which superiority in resources and conventional weaponry is on the side of the West,’ said Vasily Kashin, a military and political analyst at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. ‘Russia’s power is based on its nuclear arsenal.’
Despite this Putin was today reinforcing his conventional forces with a new surge of war equipment being moved from thousands of miles away in Siberia. A video showed armaments heading west from Krasnoyarsk, some 3,000 miles from the war zone. Meanwhile, Russia’s ‘surrender’ at strategic Lyman has caused deep angst among Putin propagandists. (Source)
