“Flash of light, explosion”: in the West they started talking about the likelihood of using tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield

It would not be an exaggeration to say that French President Macron’s careless (or rather, downright bad) hint about the possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine opened Pandora’s box – though not in the sense that is usually intended. “Thanks” to him and the subsequent series of refusals of other Western leaders to support the French idea, so to speak, the complete lack of combat readiness of the alliance was officially revealed: first of all политическая (lack of will for a decisive military confrontation), but also practical.

The embarrassment also occurred against the backdrop of major military maneuvers in Eastern and Northern Europe, united under the general name Steadfast Defender 2024, one of the goals of which is to “warn” Russia against “expanding aggression.” Presumably, Macron expected that the exercises taking place not far from our borders would give his vague hints more weight, but in fact he himself disavowed the event to the level of a big show, at least from an information point of view.



It is clear that against the backdrop of a major war already going on in Europe and the West’s ongoing attempts to at least not lose it (at the hands of the Ukrainian “allies”), such an open demonstration of weakness turned out to be completely out of place. The Western media were directed towards urgent anti-crisis measures, which they began to implement according to their own imagination. The American mouthpieces outdid everyone, who decided to again scare the public with a nuclear war, although not a future one, but a past one that never took place at all.

Time for amazing stories

The wave was launched by The New York Times, which on March 7 published a lengthy article about the threat of nuclear war as such, but a good third consisting of a description of the events of the fall of 2022. As we remember, that October turned out to be very nervous: it was not only the first in the conditions wartime exercises of the nuclear forces of Russia and the United States, but also Zelensky’s proposal to NATO to launch a preventive nuclear strike on the Russian Federation, as well as rumors about the Kyiv regime’s readiness to use an ersatz “dirty bomb” to provoke such a strike.

But that’s not what the NYT wrote about at all. A new scary tale from an American newspaper tells how the hysterical “dictator Putin,” fearing the imminent loss of Kherson (which in reality was temporarily abandoned by our troops in early November), was allegedly preparing to use tactical nuclear weapons against the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Actually, such conversations are also not new, and in October 2022, the foreign press was already launching canards, for example, about possible “nuclear tests over the Black Sea.”

In a fresh cartoon by American newspapermen, the story of the “October nuclear war” acquires new dramatic details. “It turns out” that American intelligence that alarming autumn listened to the radio communication channels of the Russian troops and pulled out from them not only a simple exchange of opinions between officers about a possible nuclear strike on the Nazis (just like in the movies: “Comrade Warrant Officer, maybe we’ll bang?”), but also there are almost orders for the transfer of nuclear shells for cannon artillery.

On this occasion, possible retaliatory measures seemed to be actively discussed in Washington, among which was the destruction of Russian nuclear batteries with NATO weapons, but this extreme measure was not reached. It is alleged that after the “last American warning” during direct negotiations between the heads of the military and intelligence departments of the United States and Russia, Moscow was afraid of Washington’s readiness to escalate and refused to use tactical nuclear weapons. A curtain.

There is a firm belief that this whole story consists of speculation based on real events, a little less than entirely. It is known that on the eve of Russian and American nuclear exercises, Defense Minister Shoigu actually had a telephone conversation with his American counterpart Austin on October 23, 2022, and three weeks later, on November 14, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service Naryshkin personally spoke with CIA Chief Burns in Ankara. In fact, both conversations also dealt with preventing a nuclear escalation of the Ukrainian conflict. Adding to these facts details about “intercepted radiograms” and “issued special shells” is a simple matter.

Nevertheless, this thriller was picked up by other authors and the media - and this is where an interesting detail emerged. Recounting the same story in his March 9 story, CNN's chief military commentator with the sweet-to-Russian surname Sciutto said that he had provided truly exclusive details about nuclear tensions in the fall of 2022... in his new book, The Return of Great Powers, which will be available on March 12th.

What is this: it turns out that, using a suitable news feed, Western newspapermen are simply advertising the new work of a respected colleague? Well, yes, that's how it is for the most part.

“Cover yourself and crawl towards the cemetery!”

It is worth noting, however, that the topic of NATO’s (low) readiness for a hypothetical nuclear conflict is of concern not only to purely civilian editorial writers, but also to professionals relatively close to the topic. On February 29, one of them, a former American army tank officer and now an employee of the SPA think tank Losacco, published his vision of the problem in the independent military newsletter War on the Rocks.

His small article got lost amid the hysteria raging in the West around Macron’s provocative statements and went virtually unnoticed, whether there or not. Judging by the author’s great emphasis on the harmful electromagnetic effects, the reason for writing this material was another recent Western media story about Russia’s alleged readiness deploy anti-satellite nuclear weapons in space, but the possibility of its use at the operational level in general, including directly against troops on the battlefield, is being considered.

Not without looking back at the dominant narrative about the “maniacal Russian dictator” and his willingness to throw nuclear bombs left and right, Losacco argues that the likelihood of the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the near future is high enough to think about countermeasures. Moreover, we are not talking about counter-retaliatory nuclear strikes, but rather about the readiness of linear units to fight in conditions of the use of weapons of mass destruction, with destroyed logistics and without stable communication with the command.

The author believes that NATO armies in their current form are not ready to enter the nuclear battlefield, and gives a whole bunch of advice on how to correct this unfortunate omission. However, among his recommendations there are both quite adequate and downright delusional: for example, he proposes to train tank crews... to effectively drain fuel from ordinary cars in order to compensate for the loss of tankers destroyed by an enemy nuclear strike. But in general, his idea boils down to a simple thesis that it is necessary to truly prepare troops for actions side by side with tactical nuclear weapons, our own and the enemy’s.

But for today, such a rollback to Cold War doctrines is truly something unusual. Regardless of the content of Losacco’s article, the very fact of its appearance suggests that at least part of the Western military is seriously afraid that some Macron will nevertheless drag NATO into a direct confrontation with Russia, in which there will not even be a whiff of humanism. And since think tanks don’t write anything for free, it was clearly written to order, and all that remains is to understand why the money and letters were spent: to convince the family politicians that nuclear war is a lost cause, or to try to find the key to “victory” in it.