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Russia-US nuclear war is no fantasy, says Kremlin ally
Russia has the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. But from Moscow's perspective, the atomic deterrent was not enough to keep the US and its NATO allies from backing Ukraine against Russia.
That was unexpected since the Kremlin views this as a Western intervention in a proxy war that is strategically vital to Russia, Dmitri Trenin, an ex-Russian intelligence colonel and former director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
For Trenin, all nuclear bets are off if the trajectory of the conflict leads to direct military conflict between Russia and NATO.
"If there is such a collision, then (...) a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States may not be seen as a fantasy," he says. "This is my worry."
Watch the full interview with Trenin in the season premiere of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer's sixth season. airing on US public television nationwide. Check local listings.
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Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant at risk of disaster, says top nuclear watchdog
Weeks ago, the head of the top global nuclear watchdog visited the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. He saw two big holes on the roof caused by high-caliber ammo that could have impacted the fuel.
On GZERO World, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi gives Ian Bremmer a first-hand account of the precarious situation there — and how close we came to "dramatic" consequences.
For Grossi, a major problem right now is that both the Russians and the Ukrainians consider the facility as part of the battlefield. He doesn't care who's doing the shelling now, whether it's Russians or Ukrainians, because his mission is to prevent disasters.
Although neither Moscow nor Kyiv have agreed to his safe zone, Grossi thinks he's getting through to Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky.
They don't have to listen to each other, he clarifies, as long as they listen to him on protecting Zaporizhzhia.
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Ian Bremmer: US support for Ukraine vs fear of Russian escalation
Rogue Russia is Eurasia Group's #1 top geopolitical risk for 2023. But what does that mean if you're Ukraine?
For Ian Bremmer, so far Ukraine and NATO have been very aligned on their goals. But that might change in the future if Ukraine's demands threaten unity between the US and its allies, he said in a GZERO Live conversation about Eurasia Group's Top Risks 2023 report.
The West will continue supporting Kyiv. But the last thing America wants is to risk giving the Ukrainians too much or too fast that it'll risk an escalation that could lead to nuclear war.
At the end of the day, Bremmer suggests, what Ukraine might find reasonable to ask for might not be reasonable for the US to provide.
Read Eurasia Group's Top Risks 2023 report here.
Watch the full live conversation: Top Risks 2023: A rogue Russia and autocrats threatening the world
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Putin bombs Ukraine
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here. A happy Monday to you. A Quick Take, again, turning to the war in Russia. Lots going on, almost all of it escalatory at this point. Most recent state of play, a spectacular attack by the Ukrainians on the Kerch Bridge, the Crimea bridge that was said by Putin to be impregnable, can't possibly be able to attack it. It was providing a lot of supply chain, military supply chain from Russia sourcing capabilities material into Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, and suddenly significantly disrupted by a Ukrainian truck bomb.
That led Putin to respond in the early hours today, rush hour in Ukraine. Indiscriminate attacks against all of Ukraine's major cities. Nearly 100 bombs, civilian targets, killing lots of Ukrainians. An act of state terrorism on the part of Russia. On the one hand, absolutely horrifying that the Ukrainians are living through the kind of attacks in recent years that we've only seen in Aleppo in Syria, in Grozny, by the Russians in early post-Soviet days, and now seeing it across Ukraine.
War crimes, yet again. Acting with impunity in terms of Russia's complete indifference to how the rest of the world sees him and reacts to him. Having said all of that, part of the reason why we're seeing state terrorism from Putin is because he does not have conventional capabilities to respond to the Ukrainian counter offensive, which continues to eat up territory, Ukrainian territory, that they are retaking from the Russian occupation, significantly in Kherson which is north of Crimea, but if the Ukrainians are able to take it, that would disrupt yet another key supply chain of Russia to Crimea.
Then finally, Zaporizhzhia, which is the land bridge between Russian and Crimea, you get all three and the Russians can mobilize all they want. They can't get troops to Crimea. They can't get troops to the South. This war continues to go badly for the Russians. The Russians continue to try to make the Ukrainians pay. The Ukrainians, of course, have extraordinary support from all of NATO. That continues. Russia's willingness to take these acts against the Ukrainians is only going to harden the resolve of NATO countries to continue to provide direct military support to Ukraine, and even to increase the levels of, say, air defense, missiles, and the like to defend themselves and also to be able to counterattack.
The next few months we are looking primarily at Ukrainian counteroffensives to take as much territory from the February 24th lines as they can. The Russians trying to get their troops in as quickly as they can to hold some of that territory. That's basically what's playing out. Beyond that, the big question is whether or not the Russians are going to take asymmetric attacks against NATO. If you watch this conflict played out from Russian state media and how Putin is portraying it to his people, it's that they are losing territory and they admit to losing territory. They're losing the bridge. They admit to losing the bridge, at least for a brief period of time, because of attacks from NATO. This isn't just Ukraine, it's all the intelligence. It's all the ordinance. It's all the money. It's all the training. They're fighting against NATO.
Well, are they going to do anything against NATO? So far what they've been doing is only against Ukraine. And the ability of the Russians to engage in asymmetric attacks against fiber attacks, cyberattacks, pipeline attacks, critical infrastructure attacks, things that the Europeans need to be able to function as normal economies, and yet well short of weapons of mass destruction on the ground in Ukraine. If the Russians were to take steps like that, how might NATO respond? That is, I think, a big question that the European leaders are asking themselves and we don't have a clear answer for. I do expect that over time, especially as it is clear that Russia's economic stranglehold on energy for the Europeans is increasingly not going to make a difference in terms of NATO response, that Putin has to think about what else he can do.
Suing for peace does not appear to be in his playbook at this point. The other thing I would say is watch carefully the Chinese, the Indians, other countries that have been more supportive or at least more willing to be on the sidelines for Putin, increasingly are being outspoken and saying they want an immediate ceasefire. They want the Russians to stop this war. Putin has been ignoring them thus far. Will he continue to, and will those countries be willing to make Russia pay any cost themself? So far they have not. That may change.
One disturbing side, we have coming up very soon in the General Assembly, a global vote that will be taken about condemning the Russian annexations of the four Ukrainian territories. That will easily pass, but it looks like the number of positive votes are going to be around 100, 110. In other words, very large numbers of abstentions from the majority of the developing world. That continues to be the story here. That because Ukraine is being treated so differently as a conflict by the West than other invasions, illegal invasions in other parts of the world, where the West would normally say, "We want a ceasefire and then we'll see what we do."
Here, the West isn't calling for a ceasefire. The West is saying it's an illegal invasion, and so the Ukrainians need to be supported to take their land back. That hypocrisy, certainly that level of lack of alignment in the way the West treats Ukraine compared to other parts of the world, is leading the developing world to say we want very little part of this crisis. To the extent that Putin is increasingly seen as a war criminal globally, is involved in terrorist activities that other states would not be allowed to get away with, that of course is going to increase pressure on the developing world to get on-side publicly on this issue. Puts more pressure on Putin, too.
That's state of play right now. I still am someone who thinks that nuclear weapons, of course, are something to be worried about because Russia has lots of them and because they're in a tough position, but the likelihood of being used or being used soon in my view is still very, very low indeed. Higher than at any point since 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis. I wasn't around for that. I don't want to be around for this, but let's hope we can avoid it.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.comWill Putin drop a nuke on Ukraine?
Vladimir Putin isn't exactly losing the war in Ukraine, but he's definitely not winning it either.
Although Russia has more territory now than before the invasion, things aren't going well. Putin has had to call up reservists, his annexation of four Ukrainian regions was immediately challenged, and he's on the hook now for selling to the Russian people the idea that they are at war with NATO and the West.
Putin's push to win at all costs might soon force him to make one very serious and potentially scary choice. He needs to land a big blow, so what bigger blow than the biggest of them all: nuclear weapons. Russia's president has already hinted at the possibility, while Washington and NATO are sorting through what they might do in response.
Let's look at why he might, or might not, pull the trigger to launch what is known as a tactical nuke, a low-yield atomic warhead designed to take out military targets, not entire cities.
The sheer destructive capacity of a nuclear weapon could turn the tide of the war in Russia’s favor. Even a small nuclear strike could wipe out entire units of Ukraine's army in minutes. It would also give the Russians time to regroup their forces to push back against the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive and appease hardliners griping about Russia not doing enough to win in Ukraine.
Putin still has some other options. He could order cyberattacks, the sabotage of European energy links, or more intense conventional strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. But none of those have the shock value of a single nuke, which might just scare Kyiv into accepting Russia’s terms for “peace” — such as the recent land grab of 15% of Ukraine.
Also, Putin perhaps thinks he can get away with it (relatively) unscathed. In other words, the US and NATO will respond, but probably not in kind.
Aside from warning of somewhat vague "catastrophic consequences," the West hasn't been very clear on what it would do if Putin pushed the nuclear button. Doing nothing at all is a non-starter, yet the US and its NATO allies, wary of a dangerous escalation with nuclear-armed Russia, might only toughen sanctions and send more advanced weapons to Ukraine — a best-case scenario for Putin.
Putin might even test a tactical nuke just to bait NATO into attacking Russia, which he's been daring the alliance to do since his invasion began. It would give him an excuse to say he was right all along about the West trying to encroach on Russia’s sphere of influence.
Still, for Russia, a non-nuclear Western response might be almost as bad as a nuclear one. US airstrikes could wipe out most of Russia's forces inside Ukraine and sink its entire Black Sea fleet in one fell swoop. Putin might back down if he thinks the price would be too high — even if it went against his own grievance-fueled narrative.
Dangerous escalation? Perhaps. But it hasn’t been ruled out by retired senior US officials.
Putin might lose his two most powerful friends if he pushes the button. Although we know both China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi are unhappy about how the war is going, we don't know what they recently told Putin about how they’d react to a Russian nuclear strike. But Putin does, and his decision-making will surely factor in how it'll go down in Beijing and New Delhi.
The Chinese or Indian response could be anything from a reprimand at the UN to cutting economic ties with Moscow right when the Russian economy is reeling from sanctions despite a strong ruble. Just the threat of turning down Russian oil and natural gas — which Putin needs to sell to keep his war machine going — should give the Russian leader pause.
There's no turning back. If Putin crosses that line, all other options cease to exist. He loses control of the narrative because he's done the unthinkable. Then again, perhaps the Russian leader has already backed himself into a corner, and it's all just a question of not if but when he orders the first nuclear strike since World War II.
What do you think Putin will do? Let us know here.This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.
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Nuclear weapons could be used; Russia's war gets more dangerous
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take to kick off your week. I have to talk about Russia. There's plenty of news in the world. There's Brazil, there's United Kingdom, there's Iran, but no, Russia is the biggest story, and it's because we've just seen the worst week in the war in terms of escalation and danger that we've had since the initial invasion on February 24th. President Putin, after meeting with some of his closest remaining friends on the global stage, the Indian prime minister, the Chinese president, the Kazakh president, all telling him directly, "Hey, the war is a horrible idea. Please end this as soon as possible." Putin does exactly the opposite and escalates. Calls up a minimum of 300,000 additional troops in a mobilization, something he had been dragging his feet on and avoiding over the last months because he knew how unpopular it would be in Russia.
Putin also announcing annexation of four separate territories in Ukraine. By the way, territory he did not completely occupy at the time that he announced, the referenda the first time I think that's ever happened in history. But nonetheless, very clearly a significant escalation with the war in Ukraine, telling the Ukrainian people, "We are taking this land from you, you are not getting it back. We will consider it Russian territory and we will defend our territory to the death." Some 7 million people on the ground in these territories annexed some 15% of Ukrainian territory. Beyond that, we had pipelines that were suddenly sabotaged, Nord Stream 1 and 2. No hard evidence as to who is behind that, though all NATO members believe both publicly and privately that the Russian government engaged in that attack as a demonstration effect, kind of similar to what the Iranians did against Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia a few years ago. The largest refinery in that country saying, "We can do a lot more if you continue to behave to isolate us the way you have been."
And now of course, we also have the Ukrainians taking land back, significant counter offensives that had started a few weeks ago and are being extended in Kherson, in the south, just north of Crimea, as well as in Donetsk, part of the Donbas, which has been the focus of this second phase of Russia's special military operations. So what is all of this mean? Well, it means that Putin is increasingly really in a box. He's now announced to his own population, "We have taken this territory. We're fighting for it. It's ours. It's going to cause real sacrifice. It's going to mean that we're going to send your young men into the battlefield, and a lot of them are going to face injury and death."
The Russians don't have adequate weaponry to give them to fight this war. They don't have the time to adequately train them. Many are being sent to the front without either, and that means that they're going to continue to underperform. Though Russia can send a lot more people into the field in southeast Ukraine than the Ukrainians themselves can marshal in the near term. Meanwhile, more sanctions are coming from the West. The US, the UK have already announced some in response to the annexation. The EU will have a unanimous eighth round of sanctions later this month. No one is asking now, "Are the Europeans about to break?" Despite the fact that that's what everyone was asking a couple of weeks ago before these escalations. Whether it's the US, the UK, or the Europeans, at least for the coming months, what we're seeing is more aid for the Ukrainians, more weapons and intelligence for the Ukrainians, more willingness to do everything they can to help the Ukrainians fight and take as much land as possible before the Russians get enough troops in to defend territory and hold the line.
In other words, this is a full-fledged, not only proxy war, but increasingly has elements of a hot war between Russia and NATO. And perhaps the most disturbing piece of all of this is if you watch Putin's speech that he gave last week, or if you look at Russian state media, it is all about Russia losing land, losing in the battlefield because they're fighting NATO, because of everything NATO's doing. And so the willingness of the Russians to increasingly take the fight to NATO is growing. And of course, the more we see that, the more dangerous it gets, the greater the potential for this war to actually expand. I don't, as I mentioned, believe that we are close to a nuclear weapon actually being used in battle. But I recognize it's now possible, and I wouldn't have said that a couple of months ago. I'll tell you, after the Russian speech, after Putin speech announcing the annexations and the mobilization in the middle of the night, I woke up thinking about "The Day After", which I haven't thought about in decades.
This was a movie that some of you will remember. I saw it in high school and the next day we had a day off basically where all we did was talk to local leaders and civic leaders about what would happen if there was a nuclear war. I had nightmares for months. There's no way you can watch Putin rattling nuclear savers with his singular capability to have that finger on the button to say that he is prepared to do everything possible to defend land that he will lose and not be somewhat horrified that we could, again, for the first time since World War II see nuclear weapons used in battle. Everything possible has to be done to avoid that. And yet so far, the United States and Europe have done a fantastic job in punishing the Russians. They've done a fantastic job in supporting the Ukrainians, but they've done a really poor job at deterring Putin.
They haven't been able to change his behavior. They haven't stopped him from escalating on the ground in Ukraine. And of course, the more he does that, the greater the desperation. The economic desperation, the international desperation, the domestic political desperation, that is what we are increasingly seeing from Putin. At some point, Putin needs to not be humiliated, but he needs to recognize reality.
He needs to understand that the future of Russia is not in the occupation of Ukraine. And unless he's prepared to get that and he's making it harder and harder to get that on himself, then we are heading towards a much more dangerous confrontation even that we've seen since February. So that's where we are presently. I wish I had some better news for everyone. It's going to be a very tough winter, certainly for the Europeans, even more so for the Russians, and particularly for the Russians that are being sent to the front lines. I don't envy them at all, but I wish we could find a way to deescalate. Unfortunately, for now, that appears to be not in the cards.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com- Risks of Russia losing: Putin, Ukraine, and potential for escalation ... ›
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Putin cornered
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. I wanted to talk to you for a couple of minutes about the staggering news that's come out over the last 24 hours from President Putin on the Russian war in Ukraine. He gave a big speech announcing, among other things, referenda for annexation of Ukrainian territory into Russia, a mobilization of Russian civilians to fight in the Ukrainian war, and threatening even nuclear strikes against those that decide to come against attack Russian territory.
I want to take all of this in order to talk about what it means for you briefly. First of all, very important point that Putin has been trying to avoid taking these measures for months now. Remember, it's a special military operation according to Putin. It's not a war. You can get up to 15 years in prison in Russia if you call it a war. He's not been performing well on the ground militarily. They sent in 190,000 troops to begin with back in February. They tried to take Kyiv. They failed. They tried to overthrow Zelensky. They failed. They lost a lot of territory. They then narrowed the scope of military operations to the land bridge from Russia into Crimea and also the extended Donbas.
But they've had major counteroffensives from a Ukraine that has fought courageously and has been strongly supported by the United States and all of NATO. And as a consequence, finally Putin said, "Okay." He's bitten the bullet. And he has indeed ordered this mobilization. We've had well over 1,000 arrests in the last 24 hours in Russia from people that are deeply upset about this mobilization, about how badly the war is going. Russian state media has indeed been honest with the Russian people about the fact they've lost a lot of territory recently. It's the first time we've seen that from Russia's propaganda institutions.
And of course, the international community is angry. And here we're not just talking about the United States and Russia's committed adversaries, but even countries like India and China and Kazakhstan who really think this war is horrible, not just for Russia but for the global order, for energy prices, for food prices, for knock-on relations, for those that are friendly with Russia. Publicly last week, they were very cautious in trying to tell Putin that things are not going well and they really would like to see an end to the war. Privately, they've been much more direct. I've met with delegations from Kazakhstan and India just over the last couple of days, including the president of Kazakhstan, and absolutely the private messages that have been delivered to Putin have been much more sharp than the ones that you've seen on television.
So look, he is increasingly isolated. He's increasingly a rogue on the global stage. But in response to all of that pushback, both from enemies and from friends, the response from Putin has been, "No I'm escalating. I'm doubling down."
Now, 300,000 troops, if he's able to mobilize them, and that is the whisper number. There is no official number that's in the actual mobilization documents, but that is what they seem to be going for in terms of the orders that you're seeing across Russian districts in the Federation. 300,000 is a lot more than the 190,000 they initially started the war with. And it would be roughly a trembling of the Russian troops that are presently fighting on the ground given the deaths and the casualties that they have faced.
It also prevents a stop-loss order. So you no longer, I mean, even if your conscription period is done, your contract is out, until this war's over, with this new special mobilization you are not allowed to leave. So clearly, anger there. But also what that means with a narrower focus of military engagement is that in the course of three to four months, when those troops start showing up after they've been trained, after they've been mobilized in force, the ability of the Ukrainians to continue to fight effectively, at least in the Donbas, will be significantly challenged. So Putin clearly wants to show that he can win with that territory with the goals of his second phase, as he calls it, of the special mobilization.
Having said all of that, the potential for a negotiated settlement is, of course, zero. The fact that the Russians are now physically going to be annexing territories, as these referenda, of course, are jokes. I mean, it's not as if the Ukrainians on the ground are all going to be voting in favor to join Russia. That's not the point. It's just a fig leaf that allows them to formally take Ukrainian territory even more than they've been occupying since 2014.
That will lead to an intensification of sanctions from the United States and its allies cutting off the Russians completely from the G7. This year, that's a contraction of their economy of about 5%. Next year, it's going to get a lot worse. Also means that this winter's going to be hard for Europe. Probably not going to be any gas flows from Russia to Europe. You could easily see a recession of 2% or 3% of the entire European Union and the UK. That is a very serious problem.
Final point, what about the nukes? Putin says he's not bluffing if you hit Russia. What's Russia? Does that include Crimea? Putin would say yes. Once they physically annex the territories that they have these fake referenda in, is that Russia? Putin would say yes. So if the Ukrainians continue to fight there, he's threatening to use nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction. Would he actually do that? He says he's not bluffing. Of course, he said that there would be military consequences if Finland and Sweden went ahead and joined NATO. Well, they decided to do it anyway, and so far the consequences have been absolutely zero. Talked to the Finnish foreign minister about that just a day ago. He said, "Yeah, we've seen absolutely nothing." Swedes, same story.
The Ukrainians have hit Crimea already. They have hit even Belgorod, which is in Russia proper. I mean, even before the war, that's Russia. What have the Russians done? They keep bombing, but thankfully no weapons of mass destruction. Do I believe Putin? No. Do I think this is a serious problem in creating Russia as a rogue state on the global stage? Absolutely. This war is getting worse, principally, of course, for the Russians and what's going to happen to their territory over the long term. And as that occurs, the danger for Russia and the world is growing.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com- Putin would rather die than admit defeat in Ukraine, says former ... ›
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Why Israel now supports an Iran nuclear deal
Israel fiercely opposed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, but now is not so against it as it was before.
Why?
Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, says the Israelis have realized that a no-deal scenario doesn't serve the country's interest — and that the Trump administration's 2018 withdrawal was a mistake because it brought Iran closer to getting the bomb.
And why does Israel get to have nukes but not Iran?
"Well, international relations is about double standards, right?"
Watch the GZERO World episode: Iran nuclear deal 2.0, or war?