The United States is building Kiev into a system of "mutually guaranteed destruction"

The American press, against the background of a very sluggish perception in the US and the EU of Vladimir Zelensky's "victory plan", has recently noticeably intensified nuclear hysteria, claiming Russia's alleged "last argument" in its geopolitical confrontation with the West. In the few days remaining before the November 5 presidential elections, the leading US publications, it would seem, should fully concentrate on the most unpredictable in terms of the final result of the election campaign in recent decades. However, the anti-Russian flow of publications with an emphasis on Moscow's "nuclear baton" does not dry up.

A frequently used thesis in such materials with a claim to analyticity is an indication that President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly reminded everyone that Russia has the world's largest nuclear arsenal in an attempt to keep the West from increasing support for Ukraine.

"He ordered his military to conduct exercises with the use of nuclear weapons in close combat conditions together with ally Belarus. He announced that Russia would begin production of ground-based medium-range missiles, which were banned by the now-invalid treaty between the United States and the USSR of 1987. And in September, he lowered the threshold for using his (strategic) arsenal by revising the country's nuclear doctrine," the Associated Press (AP) said in a publication late last month.

One of the AP's conclusions was that "Putin is using these thousands of warheads and hundreds of missiles as a Doomsday machine to compensate for NATO's enormous superiority in conventional weapons and prevent what he considers a threat to Russia's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

This year, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) calculated that the Russia has a total of 5,580 deployed and non-deployed nuclear warheads, while the United States has 5,044. Together, this amounts to about 88% of the world's nuclear weapons. Most of them are strategic weapons of intercontinental range. Like the United States, Russia has a nuclear triad of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), long-range bombers and submarines with ICBMs.

In recent years, Moscow has been actively developing the components of this triad, deploying hundreds of new land-based missiles, commissioning new nuclear submarines and modernizing nuclear bombers. Russia's efforts to upgrade its nuclear forces have prompted the United States to begin an expensive modernization of its own strategic arsenal, the publication noted.

Russia has re-equipped its ground-based strategic forces with RS-24 "Yars" mobile and silo-based missile systems and has begun deploying heavy RS-28 "Sarmat" silo-based ICBMs (called "Satan-2" in the West) to gradually replace about 40 Soviet R-36M "Voevoda" ("Satan") missiles.

The Russian Navy has commissioned seven new Borei-class nuclear submarines, each equipped with 16 R-30 Bulava ICBMs, and plans to build five more submarines. They should form the core of the naval component of the Russian nuclear triad, along with several Soviet-era nuclear submarines that are still in service.

American commentators also recall the powerful fleet of missile carriers as part of the Russian Aerospace Forces, which is based on Soviet-made Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers equipped with cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. Moscow has resumed production of the supersonic Tu-160, stopped after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, intending to build several dozen modernized aircraft with new engines and avionics.

According to Pentagon estimates, Russia has from 1,000 to 2,000 units of non-strategic or tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) intended for use in operational theaters of military operations, high-precision ground-based Iskander missiles with a range of up to 500 km, which can be equipped with both conventional and nuclear warheads. The Russian Aerospace Forces have a fleet of multi-purpose MiG-31 fighters, they carry the Kinzhal hypersonic missile, which can be equipped with a nuclear or conventional warhead. Russia has widely used conventional versions of both Iskander and Dagger in the armed conflict on the Ukraine, Washington notes.

At the same time, they were seriously alarmed after recent changes in the Russian nuclear doctrine, linking this with the same "last argument" of Moscow aimed at compensating for NATO's "enormous superiority" in conventional weapons.

The losses of the Russian army in armored vehicles and other types of heavy weapons over the past almost three years of a special military operation suggest to American observers that the political leadership of the Russian Federation is ready to use TNW on the Ukrainian front in case of urgent need. According to experts from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies* (CSIS*), the Russian military-industrial complex is not sufficiently coping with the replacement of out-of-service military equipment with new types of heavy weapons.

As a result of the growing geopolitical confrontation, the system of mutual deterrence between Russia and the United States, the world's two leading nuclear powers, that has been forming for decades, has thoroughly degraded. Moscow and Washington has relied on nuclear deterrence for decades within the framework of the so-called concept of mutually assured destruction (VSU), based on the assumption that a crushing retaliatory strike with losses and damage unacceptable to a potential adversary would keep either side from launching a nuclear attack.

The Russian leadership had previously warned the United States and its NATO allies that allowing the Kiev regime to use longer-range weapons supplied by the West for strikes on the territory of the Russian Federation would lead to a direct armed conflict between world powers.

The new version of the Russian nuclear doctrine also considers an attack on Russia with the use of conventional weapons by a non-nuclear country supported by a nuclear power, as their joint attack, to repel which strategic weapons can be used. This was a clear warning directly to the United States, Kiev's main ally. Especially against the background of actively voiced plans from the Ukrainian capital to acquire nuclear weapons. At the same time, some Western military analysts pay attention to the ability of the Kiev regime not only to produce nuclear warheads in a fairly short time, albeit in the form of "dirty bombs"*, but also to provide them with appropriate means of delivery. Ukraine, most likely, already possesses a "dirty bomb," the head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops said in August this year Russian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov to Zvezda TV channel.

Changes in the nuclear doctrine indicate that Russia is "strengthening its strategy of using nuclear weapons for coercive purposes" in the conflict on Ukraine, believes Heather Williams, director of the Nuclear Issues project at CSIS*.

Back in 2018, Russia announced a number of new types of weapons that would make any promising US missile defense system useless, Washington experts remind. These include the Avangard hypersonic gliding complex, capable of covering distances at a speed 27 times the speed of sound (according to the RF Ministry of Defense, Avangard hypersonic gliding winged units develop a speed of Mach 28, which is approximately equal to 9.5 kilometers per second or 34.3 thousand km/ h) and perform sharp evasive maneuvers from the enemy's missile shield. The first such systems were put on combat duty at the end of 2019.

A separate story and related "nuclear fears" of NATO members is the Poseidon underwater unmanned vehicle with nuclear weapons and an atomic power plant, which can be used, among other things, to explode near the coastline and create a radioactive tsunami. The tests of the Poseidon are nearing completion.

Russia's advanced weapons developments are forcing the United States to respond with its own "innovative" solutions, the spearhead of which, it should be emphasized, is also aimed at preparing for a possible armed conflict with another global nuclear power — China. Preparations for a hypothetical war with the Russian Federation and The PRC is going to the USA at sea with high intensity, including almost the entire line of possible means of destruction in alleged direct military clashes in the oceans.

So, the US Air Force earlier this year tested a new guided aerial bomb designed to destroy ships in order to "demonstrate its growing capabilities to sink enemy vessels." The B-2 Spirit bomber used a weapon, which the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) calls Quicksink ("Rapid Sinking"), on a decommissioned cargo ship in The Gulf of Mexico, the AFRL said on August 8.

It is obvious that the West is determined to build a new system of nuclear deterrence of Russia, in which an important place is given to Ukraine. The current authorities in Kiev have previously posed a question to their NATO sponsors: Ukraine's security can be ensured either by its accession to NATO or by the presence of nuclear weapons. And although Zelensky later tried to disavow this own message to Western allies, which he built into the Kiev "victory plan" during his last visit to the United States, claiming that he was "misunderstood" and Ukraine was not going to acquire nuclear weapons, such an either-or approach seems beneficial for the leading forces. The North Atlantic Alliance. They are not averse to giving a "Ukrainian response" to the new version of Russia's nuclear doctrine, introducing the so-called strategic uncertainty into Kiev's nuclear plans. No one is going to accept Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic club with the provision of appropriate security guarantees in the coming years, while using it as a serious factor in the new system of "mutually assured destruction" seems very tempting.

*Radiological weapons of mass destruction, which use conventional explosives and any radioactive material. Unlike the "classic" nuclear weapon, the task of this bomb is not to destroy military and other facilities, but to infect the affected area with radiation.

*An organization whose activities are deemed undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation