Russia Puts Nuclear Forces on High Alert

Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has put deterrence forces (nuclear forces) on high alert. This is following a slew of economic sanctions against Russia. Here’s the announcement when Putin was sitting with his cabinet and informing them of this decision and giving them the orders.
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1497978584304136194
You’ve had a lot of memes online about his defense minister’s (Sergei Shoigu) face he not looking too happy. The Kremlin just love these long tables. I’m sure you’ve seen the memes with the French president Emmanuel Macron sitting right across Vladimir Putin on some like 20 meter table. Here’s one of those again. In any case, I’m not going to gauge the defense minister’s emotions based on some frame but in any case that’s what people are saying. Let me put let me show you the response from the west. I’m going to show you the response from Jen Psaki the white house spokesperson, the head of NATO and a bunch of others. Take a look at their reaction to Putin putting Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert.
Pskai: This is really a pattern that we’ve seen from President Putin through the course of this conflict which is manufacturing threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression and the global community and the American people should look at it through that prism. We’ve seen him do this time and time again. At no point has Russia been under threat from NATO has Russia been under threat from Ukraine this is all I’m sorry I had to laugh at that that’s just a pattern from president Putin.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General: We’re going to stand up for it we have the ability to defend ourselves but we also need to call out what we’re seeing here from president Putin this is dangerous rhetoric this is this is a behavior which is irresponsible and of course if you combine this rhetoric with what they’re doing on the ground in Ukraine waging war against the independent sovereign nation conducting full-fledged invasion of Ukraine this adds to the seriousness of the situation.
Greenfield, US ambassador to UN: I’m not surprised at this at this information because Putin has tried every means possible to actually put fear in the world in terms of his action and it just means that we have to ramp up our efforts here at the United Nations and elsewhere to hold him accountable.
You can see what they’re saying. They find this deplorable they say it’s nonsensical and it’s reckless. I’m going to break this down for you. There is this term that comes from the cold war which is “mutually assured destruction”. It’s aptly named M.A.D. The idea behind this is that well if the United States launches a nuclear weapon at Russia, Russia can also launch nuclear weapons at the United States. Even if they take out the capital, for example even if they take out Moscow, Russia has nuclear-armed submarines and they also have a nuclear payload on board that are no one knows where they are. This is very the countries that have these submarines they keep this very classified for obvious reasons. So even if the capitals take out even if the entire Russian country is taken out you have Russian submarines in the oceans on the planet that can launch nuclear missiles at the United States. U.S. Can also do the same and reciprocate the favor the other way around. Russia has more nuclear weapons than anyone.
There have been efforts in the past to reduce the nuclear arsenal on both sides. Russia has six thousand, two hundred and fifty seven nuclear weapons. The United States has five thousand, five hundred and fifty. I’m going to put this very simply the number doesn’t matter. Just a dozen of those are enough to destroy the entire planet. You don’t need five thousand it’s really the definition. It’s the embodiment of the arms race and how senseless it is. In any case, this dynamic continued past the cold war. The Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore. Nevertheless, there is a balance of power in the world and so I just find it a bit funny that they’re appalled by Vladimir Putin putting Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert because I can bet you the United States has done the same. They refuse to disclose the status but it’s not like they’ve denied it. They just won’t tell us you. Of course they have it on high alert. They have these different DEFCON stages. What’s funny to me is that they’re calling this reckless and a show of force. Russia has been disconnected from SWIFT -not completely- in part. SWIFT is an international banking system right and it’s basically a form of sanctions that they’ve taken against Russia. As a result this is the announcement from Putin how come well disconnecting Russia from SWIFT has always been labeled a so-called nuclear option because financially speaking it’s so outrageous.
you can really destroy a country’s economy from that if they’re disconnected from the rest of the world. They haven’t done this completely to Russia but they have they have taken these measures to put sanctions on Russia in all sorts of ways including partial removal from SWIFT, so they got this response from Putin. The silos is also another thing but when it comes to nuclear bombers that is what he means. For example the flight crews will be put on alerts they might be refueling the nuclear bombers. Let me be clear, no one is going to bomb anyone right now. They’re just getting ready to do that as a threat. What Putin is doing here is basically signaling to the Americans you better stop messing around because if you’re going to go nuclear on our finances, we’re ready to pop off as well.
I do find it a kind of it is really primitive in a way what the nuclear powers do. Whether it’s UK or anyone else with this deterrence but the hypocrisy is funny. I can just point to a few examples last year. Early 2021 the United States was flying its b-52 nuclear bombers right next to Iran. That’s what they call a show of force and that’s what Putin is doing here. It’s a show of force it’s like you better back off. It’s like a peacock spreading the feathers and everything. It means back off and I just find it funny because when the United States does it, they call it a show of force. There’s nothing wrong with it. They act like of course, we’re (Americans) sending an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. We’re going to do a flyover of v52s right next to Iran to provoke them and show them who’s the boss. That’s totally fine. It’s a show of force! But when Russia does it, it’s reckless. You have to admit there’s a double standard here.

Of course, I don’t need to I don’t need to tell you that there are other countries with nukes like the UK and Israel which has an undeclared arsenal, China, North Korea, India, Pakistan & France. Notice how Iran is not on the map above but again that’s another issue. This is also something else I want to show you this is from back in 2019. Look how the Russian submarines have done exercises before, where they can get very close to the US. To be fair, I remember in World War II, the Germans were already bringing their submarines off the coast of new York to see how far they could go. Every country has a way to deter the other especially, specifically the nuclear powers.

I really think the hypocrisy is staggering because when the US and the UK and the western powers do this, it’s called show of force and there’s nothing wrong with it. They say we’re establishing our dominance but when Russia does it, then they start acting like it’s worse than what they do. It’s not good. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think anyone should be using bloody nukes but it is hypocritical. I think that Russia has been very clear before that if they get disconnected from SWIFT from the international banking system, they would they would consider that as an act of war. So the point that I’m trying to make here is that just because the west take measures like sanctions or they punish countries economically, don’t think for one second that it’s not warfare. Some people might be scratching their heads saying: Don’t you think that’s a bit of an exaggeration? Why are you responding with getting your nuclear forces on high alert to some sanctions? No, you don’t get it. It’s siege warfare.
when they used to besiege a city in the middle ages or whatever they in old days they would encircle your city. Back then cities had walls and they would just starve you out. They’d make sure no food is coming in. You would you would die from disease or starvation or whatever. They would besiege you and this is the same thing. It’s just being done in a in a modern way. It’s being done on an international scale. So they’re starving countries out with sanctions. They do this with Syria right now for example 80 of the population are below the poverty line. I can assure you that this was not because of Bashar al-Assad okay. That was not the case before 2011. That’s a result of the war and specifically the sanctions. Iran has suffered because of sanctions, as well. Cuba has been under an embargo for 60 years and disconnecting a country from SWIFT.
This is really an act of war in many ways because you are basically saying we are coming to starve you so whether you kill people with bombs or by starving them, the result is quite the same. The disruption that it does to the country’s economy is quite large. Hopefully nothing comes of this. During the cold war there were much worse moments than this and thankfully war was averted so we can only hope for the best and that everything is going to be okay. But don’t think that other countries don’t see economic sanctions as something peaceful or some kind of mild remedial measure. No, they really this hurts people and they take this seriously. The United States would do the same if something of a similar caliber or something on a similar scale were done to them.