![]() Third, that American support for Ukraine is just a pretext for seeking the destruction of Russia. ![]() Second, that American shipments of weapons to Ukraine have prolonged the fighting and caused needless suffering among civilians. The propaganda absolves Russia, blames the United States for the war, and has four main tenets: first, that a long-standing American effort to bring Ukraine into NATO poses a grave threat to Russian security. This Russian propaganda has been amplified and endorsed by an unusual assortment of people in the United States, including the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs. But in state-controlled news media, the almost-daily threats to use nuclear weapons have become central to Russian propaganda, seeking to inspire fear in NATO countries, discourage NATO forces from entering the war, and limit the supply of military assistance to Ukraine.Įric Schlosser: What if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine? A few days after the war began, President Vladimir Putin complained that “NATO countries are making aggressive statements about our country” and warned that, as a result, Russia’s nuclear forces would be moved to “a special regime of combat duty.” No apparent change in operational readiness followed that warning. The invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied from the outset by Russian threats to use nuclear weapons. On December 26, Engels was struck by another Ukrainian drone, which killed three servicemen. Nevertheless, the presence of nuclear warheads at a base routinely used by Russian bombers for attacks on Ukraine is a reminder of how dangerous this war remains. There was little chance of a nuclear detonation, even from a direct hit on the heavily fortified bunkers. The drone attack on Engels was a milestone in military history: the world’s first aerial assault on a nuclear base. Blackjacks and Bears were designed during the Cold War for nuclear strikes on NATO countries, and they still play that role in Russian war plans. But the attack had a broader significance that went largely unnoticed.Ībout four miles from the runway at Engels where the explosion occurred, a pair of underground bunkers is likely to contain nuclear warheads, with a capacity to store hundreds of them. Most of the reporting on the drone attack focused on the boldness of it, the failure of Russian air defenses, and the impact on Russian morale. The explosion was caused by a Ukrainian drone, and it reportedly damaged two TU-95 Bears, enormous turbo-prop bombers that have been a symbol of the Kremlin’s airpower since the early 1950s. TU-160 Blackjacks have been taking off from Engels for the past 10 months, carrying cruise missiles and firing them at cities in Ukraine. The airfield is one of the two principal bases in Russia that host long-range strategic bombers. O n the morning of December 5, 2022, a large explosion occurred at Engels Air Base, about 500 miles southeast of Moscow.
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