Russia’s conventional military forces have taken a hammering as President Putin’s three-day “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine has extended well into its fourth year. The army has suffered over one million casualties, lost anywhere between 5,000-10,000 tanks and had its formerly magnificent Black Sea fleet obliterated.
But in the background, Putin and his other gangster leaders like former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, have been able to lean on their 5,000 or so nuclear warheads to bully Ukraine and European capitals. However, this strategy has taken a blow recently, and its apparent frailty may be the area the West should exploit in order to gain a just peace for Ukraine.
Russia’s nuclear submarine base in the Far East appears to have been damaged by the tsunami which swept Russia’s Pacific coast on Wednesday after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake. The tsunami hit the Rybachiy naval base on the Kamchatka peninsula.
This is Russia’s largest nuclear submarine base for its strategic nuclear deterrent, and also other nuclear-powered submarines. It is strategically based: originally to be well out of range of European forces, but now also Ukrainian forces. It has access to the vast Pacific Ocean, no doubt to hide from NATO surveillance and launch attacks on the US if need be.
Satellite images show that on the surface there is some damage to the port, unsurprising at only 75 miles from the epicentre of one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded on the planet. The possibility of damage below the waterline must be legion, where one anticipates many of the secure submarine “pens” will be.
The deafening silence coming out of the Kremlin since the tsunami perhaps suggests there is more than just a bit of flooding and building damage in the area. One just has to consider the damage to the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan after the tsunami there, to see the power and damage that these natural disasters can produce. And besides, the earthquake which caused the damage in Japan was way smaller than this one.
It is only a few months since the brilliant Ukrainian secret service operation, Op Spider’s Web, destroyed over a third of Russia’s tactical nuclear bomber aircraft, thousands of miles from Ukraine. It also appears to me that most, if not all of Russia’s Iskander missiles, used to launch tactical nuclear weapons have been converted to carry conventional warheads. Hence, my assertion that Moscow’s nuclear deterrent might not be quite as usable today as the Kremlin would have us believe.
In isolation, all these events are interesting but probably marginal to global security. Yet put together they might be very significant. The idea of nuclear deterrence, apart from “Mutually Assured Destruction”, of course, is balance and equilibrium, and this state of play has kept the peace for over 80 years.
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It may well be now, that the West is in the ascendency, or at least has the upper hand. President Putin and his “lap dogs” like Medvedev and spokesman Dmitry Peskov, have threatened Ukraine and most specifically the UK with nuclear attack constantly since the illegal invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. In response, the UK has announced the purchase of fifth-generation nuclear stealth jet the F-35A, and it has become apparent this week that there are now once again US tactical nuclear weapons in the UK after a 15-year absence.
Perhaps it is time for the West to play the Kremlin at its own game, and articulate that there is no longer a nuclear equilibrium and that the devastated Russian army is no match for a modern NATO force, now strengthened with hundreds of thousands of Swedish and Finnish soldiers. That the only way forward is to negotiate a just peace for Ukraine; the only alternative to wait for and watch the demise of the current Russian dictatorship?
We know Putin exploits weakness but respects strength. And nothing shows strength more than having a surplus of nuclear weapons.
But are Keir Starmer and European leaders up to this type of brinksmanship? Probably not. Trump might be, though he has hardly been reliable and straight in his first six months of his new run at the White House.
Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon OBE is a former commander of UK and Nato CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear) forces
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