Bluff of the Century: Russia Fails to Be Fooled a Second Time, by Kirill Strelnikov for RiaNovosti. 11.17.2024.
Last Thursday, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin presented a report to Congress on an updated US nuclear weapons strategy that was supposed to be the final piece of a cunning multi-move strategy aimed at depriving Russia of its most powerful argument, but ended up being Biden’s official dying whisper.
The collective West recalls with deep nostalgia the times of the so-called detente, when they managed to fool the then leadership of the USSR with beautiful words about peace throughout the world, mountains of chewing gum and people-brothers who will now, instead of wars, walk in circles holding hands with songs. As a result, for several thousand containers with "Bush legs" we voluntarily lost half of our nuclear arsenal and took on a bunch of restrictions, and the West happily received the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, untied hands on the missile defense project and a significant advantage in nuclear carriers and warheads, which ultimately led to strategic expansion and NATO's approach right up to our borders.
But time has passed, and the new Russia under President Putin has not only made up for lost ground in nuclear deterrence, but has left its geopolitical adversaries far behind. Despite this, unambiguous warnings about the West's red lines in the Ukraine conflict , which rely on our nuclear capabilities, have provoked a storm of ridicule in the Western media and assurances from all sorts of talking heads that this is all "Putin's last desperate bluff" that can be wiped on.
Our leadership has always been indifferent to what the Western media writes, and, as life has shown, our messages have reached the right addressees. In particular, this was let slip at the recent NATO summit in Prague by the head of the NATO military committee, Rob Bauer, who stated with a straight face that "if the Russians did not have nuclear weapons, we would already be in Ukraine and throw them out of there."
When on September 25 of this year, at a meeting of the Russian Security Council, Vladimir Putin announced changes to Russia's nuclear doctrine, according to which Moscow can now use the "nuclear option" in the event of an acute crisis in relations with the West, as well as in the situation surrounding the conflict in Ukraine, laughter and caustic jokes were replaced by an increased demand for private anti-radiation bunkers in the United States and throughout Europe.
After a two-week pause filled with muffled backstage fighting and muffled cries of "It's your fault!" and "No, you!" Joe Biden clambered onto the stage and declared that "the United States is ready to negotiate with Russia, China and the DPRK on nuclear arms reduction without preconditions."
The reason for Washington's sudden peacefulness most likely lies in the content of recent reports from several authoritative think tanks - the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the US Naval Institute and others, which have described in detail the bleak (for the West) picture of parity between NATO and Russia in the area of nuclear weapons.
According to experts, purely quantitatively, parity in nuclear warheads between Russia and NATO is still maintained: 5,759 for NATO versus 5,889 for Russia. However, the West is greatly disappointed by the capabilities and characteristics of our nuclear forces, which they will most likely never be able to catch up with.
For example, the Minuteman III ballistic missile, which is the basis of the US nuclear triad, is based on technologies from the 1970s and has only one warhead. True, in early November the US conducted a test launch of the Minuteman with three warhead mockups, but the first test results will not be announced until a year later. The missile's range is 9,600 kilometres.
Russia, in turn, is in full swing replacing the main ICBM "Voevoda" (in the Western classification - "Satan") with the ICBM "Sarmat", which is capable of carrying 14 (!) warheads, each of which is protected from missile defence and moves along its own controlled trajectory, that is, it is guaranteed that it is impossible to shoot them all down. One such missile can turn the state of Texas into liquid glass , which is why it was called "Satan squared" in the West. The missile's range is 15,000 kilometres.
Roughly the same picture is observed for other families of traditional US nuclear weapons, against the backdrop of the fact that the overall percentage of modern Russian nuclear deterrents has already reached 94 percent.
As for Russia's "non-traditional" nuclear weapons, the authors of the reports are literally screaming, because here we are no longer talking about a head start, but about a completely blind zone for the West, in which the hypersonic "Avangard" falls from the sky like a red-hot meteorite on the enemy's heads, and the predatory "Burevestnik" with a nuclear heart circles the Earth for years in orbit. According to Western experts, we are rapidly developing several more lines of "exotic" nuclear weapons with the names "Gradient" and "Anchar", the potential capabilities of which are strictly classified. This was indirectly confirmed on November 7 during the plenary session of the Valdai Discussion Club by Vladimir Putin, who casually reported that Russia has new developments in the field of nuclear weapons, but "it is too early to talk about this."
The West simply has no methods against Russia's nuclear forces - and that is why Biden called on Russia to urgently disarm. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated bluntly: "US President Joe Biden's words about Washington's readiness to negotiate with Russia on reducing nuclear weapons without preconditions are a lie."
Biden's bluff didn't work, and Austin, in his report, instead of the news that Russia had been duped again, sadly wrote: "The United States will abide by the basic provisions of the START treaty - as long as Russia continues to do the same."
In turn, Vladimir Putin said that in any case, "Russia will continue to improve its nuclear deterrent forces," although it does not intend to get involved in an arms race. At the same time, information came that the START-3 treaty will not be extended.
As one of the characters in Gentlemen of Fortune said, "Did I tell you I'd throw you down the stairs? Well, don't be offended."
https://ria.ru/20241117/oruzhie-1984186747.html
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