Russia make nuclear threat to deter Ukraine aid
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The Kremlin continues to attempt to employ nuclear threats to deter Western military aid provisions to Ukraine ahead of Ukraine’s planned counteroffensive. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu justified Russia’s decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus by accusing NATO of intensifying combat training and reconnaissance activities near the Russian and Belarusian borders and accused the West of escalating the war in Ukraine by providing additional military aid to Ukraine on April 4. Shoigu reinforced existing Russian nuclear threats by stating that Belarus has nuclear-capable attack aircraft and nuclear strike-capable Iskander-M systems. Shoigu also stated that Belarusian missile forces began training in Russia to operate Iskander-M systems, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, on April 3. Shoigu’s statements do not present any new information on Belarusian training and are likely part of an information operation. ISW previously reported that Belarusian servicemen were training with Iskander systems in Russia as of February 2023. Shoigu’s reinvigorated nuclear blackmail rhetoric coincides with Finland joining NATO and a new US aid package to Ukraine. ISW continues to assess that the risk of nuclear escalation remains extremely low and that Russian deployments of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus are highly unlikely to affect battlefield realities in Ukraine. Russian-deployed nuclear weapons in Belarus additionally will almost certainly remain under the control of Russian personnel permanently deployed in Belarus.
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The Kremlin continued efforts to (falsely) reassure the Russian public that the war in Ukraine will not have significant long-term economic consequences. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Tula Railway Engineering Plant and attempted to address workers’ economic concerns on April 4.[15] Putin later held a State Council Presidium meeting to discuss developing Russian industry in the face of sanctions pressure, during which he claimed that sanctions are having positive outcomes by forcing Russian firms to embrace import substitution, an argument the Kremlin has made sporadically since the 2014 annexation of Crimea.[16] Putin suggested in both meetings that Russian industry as a whole will be able to grow like the Russian agricultural sector did following the imposition of Western sanctions in 2014.[17] Putin has previously relied on the example of post-2014 Russian agricultural growth to assuage Russians of their economic anxieties but has yet to offer concrete proposals for how Russian industry would increase domestic production in a similar way.[18] ISW previously assessed that the Kremlin will likely struggle to reassure Russians about their economic concerns while also setting informational conditions for a protracted war in Ukraine and mobilizing a wider portion of Russia’s defense industrial base (DIB).[19]
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The nuclear threats and the attempts to reassure the country that the Russian economy is doing OK despite the sanctions suggest that the regime is having trouble. The war is clearly not going well for Russia and they are trying to restructure their economy to do without regular trade with the West. It is not clear that Russia can replace Western goods with domestic production, nor replace the sale of their own goods although they may do more trade with China.
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General Rustam Muradov was sacked in the aftermath of the failure, the Moscow Times reported, citing officials in the Russian defence ministry.
Michael Kofman, a military analyst, told the newspaper: “Muradov had the Russian military repeatedly attacking in small mechanized formations through minefields, across open terrain. And they accomplished nothing in Vuhledar.”
The battle for Vuhledar, some 100 miles south west of Bakhmut, is said to have been one of the most embarrassing defeats suffered by Moscow in the entire war, with Russian forces reportedly losing 130 armoured vehicles.
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Are we seeing the beginning of a Night of the Long Knives in Russia? In the summer of 1934, Hitler ordered the murder of leaders of the SA, a Nazi private militia that was running out of control and threatening his power. The apparent assassination of Maksim Fomin, aka Vladlen Tartarsky – a vocal pro-war critic of the Kremlin’s handling of the invasion of Ukraine and cheerleader for the Wagner Group of mercenaries – has been interpreted by some as a shot across the bows of Wagner’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Prigozhin is sometimes spoken of as a potential successor to Putin and in recent months has frequently crossed swords with Putin’s inner circle, publicly alleging incompetence and even accusing defence minister Sergei Shoigu of treason. This appears to have rattled Putin as well as the military top brass to the extent that the army has been accused of deliberately and needlessly expending Wagner mercenaries’ lives and depriving them of ammunition in order to clip their wings and even get rid of them.
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Russia tries new tactics to get past Ukraine’s air defense in Odesa Oblast
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“This time, they used a new tactic, trying to bypass our air defense. They directed Shahed drones from the Azov Sea’s east coast at a relatively low altitude, so that they would be as invisible as possible on approach. That's why the air alarm was sounded during the work of the air defense,” said Humeniuk.
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Ukraine’s Southern Air Command managed to shoot down 14 of the 17 UAVs.
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On Oct. 14, a Russian engineer named Gleb Karakulov boarded a flight from Kazakhstan to Turkey with his wife and daughter. He switched off his phone to shut out the crescendo of urgent, enraged messages, said goodbye to his life in Russia and tried to calm his fast-beating heart.
But this was no ordinary Russian defector. Karakulov was an officer in President Vladimir Putin’s secretive elite personal security service — one of the few Russians to flee and go public who have rank, as well as knowledge of intimate details of Putin’s life and potentially classified information.
Karakulov, who was responsible for secure communications, said moral opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and his fear of dying there drove him to speak out, despite the risks to himself and his family. He said he hoped to inspire other Russians to speak out also.
“Our president has become a war criminal,” he said. “It is time to end this war and stop being silent.”
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Putin’s meatgrinder tactics are destroying a generation of Russian men
Vladimir Putin’s regime is in its death throes. His “special military operation”, far from disarming Ukraine, has only succeeded in disarming Russia. Moscow has lost over 220,000 soldiers to death or injury alongside 1,900 tanks. These are the sort of numbers we associate with the first world war; modern militaries are rarely built to handle such catastrophic losses.
It’s no wonder that videos on social media appear to show burgeoning mutinies in the ranks of Russian units, or the much-feared criminals of the Wagner group complaining that they have no ammunition. The fighting around Bakhmut resembles Passchendaele or the Somme, with barely trained recruits sent into killzones to die.
So desperate is Russia for manpower that I am now hearing credible reports that the Kremlin has identified around 4 million people across the country that it believes could be press-ganged into the army. These, it believes, are men whose absence would be little missed; those with no fixed abode, with no close family, and sometimes with intellectual disabilities or drug use issues that make it difficult to hold down work. If these reports are correct, they will be given a day or two of training, a gun – and ammunition if they are lucky – before they are pushed to the front.
There it is believed that Putin’s conscripts last little more than seven days before they leave. If they are lucky, they are wounded. If they are a little less lucky, they leave in a coffin. And for some, they will be left to rot where they fall with nobody at home much the wiser. Is this really so difficult to believe when Moscow has already emptied its jails of murderers and rapists to fight and die in these same trnches?
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The historic move comes after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which stirred fears in countries that border Russia.
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