Nuclear Decapitation Strikes: How Putin Wins With Nukes

PUTIN HAS NOTHING TO LOSE BY GOING NUCLEAR, AND A WORLD TO SURPRISE, SO THAT’S WHAT HE DESIRES: 

Since February 2022, Putin and his helpers have said, and repeated that, if they don’t get their way, humanity should go. The idea that if a tyrant does not get his way, humanity should disappear is new: on n’arrête pas le progrès. It’s found in some religious texts where angry, jealous gods get rid of humanity. Putin is the first tyrant who expressed the will to destroy all, and has the means to do so.

Putin drew nuclear red lines, assesses the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), and they have been crossed since, and Putin did nothing spectacular. See: SPECIAL REPORT: ASSESSING PUTIN’S IMPLICIT NUCLEAR THREATS AFTER ANNEXATION, Sep 30, 2022, observes that Putin did not renew immediate nuclear threats when he annexed four provinces of Ukraine, September 30, 2022. This gives a false feeling of security, and opens humanity to a Putin surprise.

However, ISW concludes that: “The more confident Putin is that nuclear use will not achieve decisive effects but will draw direct Western conventional military intervention in the conflict, the less likely he is to conduct a nuclear attack.” Indeed, indeed… As long as the “West” has somebody to talk to.

However the following is true:

1. Without Putin using nuclear weapons, Ukraine will recover all her lost territories, including Crimea.
2. Such an Ukrainian victory will be accompanied with huge losses for the Kremlin, in all ways. 
3. The catastrophic losses will bring regime change in the Kremlin.
4. Putin, although otherwise a complete idiot, may be smart enough to guess the preceding. So:

Let’s explore the unthinkable, where Putin does exactly what the “West” does not expect him to do.

***

Helping Ukraine is not just a moral necessity, it’s a survival necessity. We can’t let inhumanity win, it will come for all of us, ultimately.

The United Nation determined in September 2022 that children as young as 4 were raped, tortured and killed in Ukraine, by Putin forces, in significant numbers. It is the necessity of survival for  humanity to fight against inhumanity.

We are going down an apocalyptic decision tree. In the short run, Putin is going to try to overwhelm Ukrainians with human waves… at least so goes the conventional thinking. As Putin sent mainly minorities to fight, this has the advantage of a genocide against minorities, for example the Crimean Tartars. Ultimately, though, this traditional Kremlin method will fail, against experienced, increasingly well armed, extrmely motivated Ukraine. 

And Putin should know this.

At that point, the best outcome, for non-Putin civilization, is that the Russian  military eliminates Putin. Putin also knows this. Putin should also know this. So Putin knows he does not have forever to win. 

So let’s suppose that Putin is not eliminated (while praying to all known divinities, and other imaginable, that he will be). 

***

VLAD THE MAD’S BEST OPTION IS NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON:

Putin then must terrify Ukraine into submission, by submitting it to nuclear bombing… and sooner rather than later. Terrifying Zelinsky and his government looks impossible, so the only solution is to eliminate them. 

Indeed, the smartest way for Putin to nuclear bomb his enemy is not by using nukes on the battlefield: Ukrainian forces are dispersed, armored, entrenched, mobile, Putin would have to use several nukes on a concentrated front, and on Ground Line Of Communications behind. The military advantage would be slim, if any; the world outrage would be great; NATO’s “devastating response” would consist into opening the spigot of full military help to Ukraine [1].Putin would argue he is using nukes on (just annexed) Russian soil to defend from a Neo-Nazi invasion, but the whole world would turn against him.

So using nukes as ISW expects him to do, striking troop concentrations and GLOCs, with several nukes, would bring more of the same to Putin, just worse. Alleging, as Putin did, that the US was the first to nuclear bomb, and so “created a precedent” is irrelevant: the US did not launch an invasion of Japan, and eben after Japan surrendered, did not invade Japan nor a fortiori annex it territory and claim that Japan had no right to exist. Instead of annexing territory, the US imposed the vote of Japanese women (immediately)…   

***

DECAPITATION STRIKES ON UKRAINE: 

The war aim of Putin, expressed for decades, is to destroy the Ukrainian state. We saw above that he can’t do it conventionally, or with a dozen nukes… That leaves us with another obvious possibility, which would achieve the element of surprise. In his Art Of War, Sun Tzu wrote: In conflict, direct confrontation will lead to engagement and surprise will lead to victory. Those who are skilled in producing surprises will win. Such tacticians are as versatile as the changes in heaven and earth.

By trying a nuclear decapitation strike on the Ukrainian state, killing the Ukrainian leadership, Putin would achieve surprise.

How far from each other are the presidency, national assembly, department of defense and regalian ministries of Ukraine? The presidency and Rada (national assembly) are 500 meters apart. And so on. Putin could use a MIRVed rocket with one warhead going to the presidency, the other to the Rada, etc… Putin could launch one of his “Satan 2” missiles (the RS-28 Sarmat), and be done with the leadership of Ukraine. The warheads could be programmed to explode after impact, causing tremendous shockwaves which would destroy all very deep underground installations in Kvyiv. Then Putin would appear on TV, completely enraged, and accuse the “West” to have done it. 

The way Putin could pretend to look at such a war crime, is a win-win: he would have killed the “Neo-Nazi” leadership, and intimidated Ukraine into submission. After the decapitation strike on Kyiv, Putin could contact individual army commands in Ukraine, and order them to surrender, or to see the cities they are in, or next, be submitted to similar nuclear bombardment. 

What would NATO do? Well, nothing, because NATO DID NOT THINK ABOUT PUTIN GOING FULL WACKO.

***

HOW TO PREVENT NUCLEAR DECAPITATION STRIKES:

First, imagine the scenario presented here, and feel its likelihood. 

Putin is a malefactor with only one concern: reconstitute the old Kremlin empire, and anything else is not tolerable. Only victory will bring him survival… another similarity with Adolf Hitler. 

It is a modern tragedy surpassing anything written in the past. One is dizzy, just contemplating the consequences. 

The Ukrainian government, and NATO, should keep this in mind, the possibility of a nuclear decapitation strike. Thus they should get ready, and MUST be blatant about it. The Russian military has to understand decapitation strikes would probably not work, ONCE COUNTERMEASURES are taken. Faced with this, the Russian military would perhaps draw the conclusion that it is the Kremlin which needs decapitation.

So the focus should be on dispersing the Ukrainian government, and military commands make them mobile… Well sheltered, and yet not too associated with large conurbations. Also the West should scramble to produce massively anti-missiles and anti-ballistic systems. There are a number of these systems in existence, but insufficient numbers, or developed by the US, France and Israel. Early versions of these systems should be sent to Ukraine, ASAP. 

If Ukraine and NATO take those precautions, and the option of decapitation strikes will turn into a probable ineffective nuclear slaughter all over Ukraine, the decapitation strikes option would be closed. 

Putin will then be reduced to multiple use of nukes on the battlefield, hoping that would scare Ukraine into submission. The problem of NATO and Ukraine will then be to make this nuclear battlefield behavior unsustainable [2].

But that would be a a lesser problem.

***

PUTIN’S CRIMINAL DEMENTIA WAS LONG OBVIOUS, STOP UNDERESTIMATING IT… Especially when evaluating the future:

The present situation with Putin is no surprise to me: I wrote many essays comparing in detail Putin with Hitler for very good and deep reasons, the fundamental oligarchic organization of the world, more than a decade ago. Most “leaders” pretended to be surprised about Putin’s behavior in 2022. However, they egged Putin on, for decades, just as Hlter had been egged on, by western oligarchic predecessors. Self-declared “leader” Obama used to be Putin’s accomplice, a mafioso talking to another, through Medvedev, then “president” of Russia, in 2012:”Tell Vladimir I will be freer to do whatever he wants me to do, after the election,” said the corrupt “leader” over a hot mike… Obama, and Merkel, and the other corrupt ones led into “satanism”, Putin himself declared on September 30, 2022, knowing all too well what he was talking about. 

The satanic mood Putin was part of is extensive. An ex-friend of mine, Philip Short wrote a glowing biography of tyrant Putin, exonerating him for the crimes related to Chechnya in 1999, when Putin was already in charge.

I am sure Philip Short, once a big man at the BBC, was paid… Hey mortgages, you know, properties all over, castles in the Provencal sky… So were thousands of others… And, implicitly, they like the privileges, the money, the power, but they also would hate to fall victims of accidents, as happened to many oligarchs who did not faithful obey the nuclear Czar… Don’t we all…

So, if civilization wants to avoid being surprised by nuclear decapitation strikes, get ready for them…

Let me repeat slowly: Putin and his criminal oligarchic clique have lost the conventional war with Ukraine and democracy. Thus, Putin is tempted by a nuclear decapitation strike against what he calls the “Neo-Nazis” in Ukraine and the “neocolonial” “satanism” of “the West”. Nuclear strikes would be effective, because the West would have no answer. Ukraine and the West have to expect, take countermeasures, and thus, prevent this.

Patrice Ayme

***

[1] Notice that, in this scenario, NATO would have had to switch to massive war production of sophisticated anti-missile systems… but that is neither easy, nor fast to do. France is ramping up the production of Rafale fighter-bomber, but many subcontrators find it very hard to do so. Production of the US HIMARS rockets is 9,000 a year. Ukraine is rumored to use 6,000 a month. Even expanding production lines for old-fashioned, unguided 155 mm howitzer shells can take more than a year. Guided and submunitions shells, as France and the US produce, take much longer to ramp up.

***

[2] That would mean to enable the Ukrainian to hit Russian cities with conventional means.

Hypersonic Russian missile strike on Lviv, Western Ukraine, fired from Russia, 20 March 2022. Such missiles can carry thermonuclear warheads. Having a high probability to intercept them, as soon as they are fired from over Russia, would be a formidable deterrent, because Russian-made nuclear material would fall over the Russian empire.

Tags: Decapitation Strike, Ukraine