Friday night, the Russian armed forces suffered another of its trademarked humiliations at the hands of Ukraine when the homeport of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet (Ukraine Carries out Extensive Drone Attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Sevastopol Homeport) was attacked by a combined swarm of undersea and aerial drones. At least three Russian surface combatants, two guided missile frigates, and a minesweeper received some degree of damage. However, the damage was much less consequential than the pie-in-the-face to a fleet that has seen its headquarters attacked by Ukrainian drones and its flagship, the Moskva, sunk by Ukrainian anti-ship missiles ...

Adding insult to injury, Ukrainian hackers broke into Crimea television channels and ran the video of the attack. //

Louise1
17 hours ago
Pres. Erdogan and I don't always agree, but I'm glad he's escorting the Ukrainian grain convoys.

I like Darth Putin ( https://twitter.com/DarthPu... ):

Day 250 of my 3 day war. My army advances backwards and I'm losing all my warships in a land war to a country that doesn't have a navy while my air force fires at Europe's largest country and misses it, hitting one next door.

I remain a master strategist. //

Dieter Schultz, AKA X of...
20 hours ago edited
Two things are becoming more and more evident from this war. The first is that Putin knows he is weak, militarily, economically, and politically. ...
Vlad probably wasn't aware of the wisdom of the old saying (slightly modified), "Better to Remain Silent in Russia and Be Thought a Fool a Powerful Country than to Speak Start a War in Ukraine and Remove All Doubt Destroy that Myth".

Although, what's the use of being a bully in charge of what is thought to be a powerful country if you can't bully other countries and do what you want, eh?

As always, the implications of an event are more significant than the finite action. For instance, the successful attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge has greatly complicated the Russian defense of occupied Kherson and, I think, will feature heavily in the eventual Russian evacuation of that province.

A successful attack on a heavily defended target like Sevastopol has to shake the Russian Black Sea Fleet and its command structure. An unknown number of unmanned vehicles were able to prosecute an attack in what may be a first in the history of warfare. No matter what the damage was, the fact that it happened is important. It is also important to note that Ukraine will have learned more about carrying out such an attack than Russia will have learned about preventing it. The Black Sea Fleet had a major command shake-up after the Moskva was lost; it is fairly safe to predict that it will have another one after this fiasco.

The attack shows that the Black Sea Fleet is not secure even in its home anchorage. This anchorage will become less safe as Ukraine’s technical capabilities increase.

Though Zelensky frames the question in terms of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the IAEA demand that Russia cease all actions directed at the plant, the larger point is Putin and his allies threatening to nuke someone several times a week Putin’s Spokesman Won’t Rule out Using Nukes if Russia’s Existence Is Threatened; Putin Orders Russian Nuclear Forces on Alert Status as His Ukrainian Adventure Stalls). You must always plan based on the enemy’s capabilities, not their intentions. If you don’t, you end up mired in a seven-month-long war with no end in sight when you thought the enemy’s army would defect (Putin Shows Signs of Panic, as He Calls on Ukraine Military to Mutiny) and an adoring populace would welcome you.

The West is faced with two rather stark choices. It can reward Putin’s use of nuclear blackmail and choose to live with Putin’s aggressive version of Russian imperialism that guarantees we will fight wars like this again in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland. Or it can acknowledge that Russia has nuclear weapons and, as we did successfully for the half-century of the Cold War, use diplomacy to deter Putin from pulling the trigger.

I don’t think anyone should want to live in a world where a rogue actor gets what he wants just because he threatens to nuke someone. That’s just me. //

Well over two million Ukrainians from the illegally occupied areas of Ukraine have been forcibly deported to remote regions of Russia. In June, the Russian wire service Interfax quoted Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the National Defence Management Centre of the Russian Federation, saying 1,936,911 Ukrainians have been deported to Russia since the beginning of the war; 307,423 of whom are children. The UN has warned Russia about placing Ukrainian children for adoption in Russian homes and, as early as March, raised concerns about some 91,000 Ukrainian children who had been deported and separated from their parents and placed in boarding schools and Russian homes.

Zelensky characterizes the deportations as a form of genocide (the forcible adoption of Ukrainian children inside Russia is a clear violation of Article II of the 1949 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) but says it is currently impossible to know the scope of the deportations. //

MARGARET BRENNAN: Can there be stability in Europe if Vladimir Putin remains in power?

PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY: No.

I agree. I’m also coming to agree with the opinion of the former Commander, US Army Europe, and one-time guest in my house, retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges.

Angela Walters @AngelaW07792262
·
Replying to @Gerashchenko_en
Lt-General (Retired) Ben Hodges former commander USArmy Europe @Telegraph
"Prepare for #Russia itself to disintegrate. The #Kremlin's disastrous losses in #Ukraine could result in the collapse of the #RussianFederation"
#Putin #RussianArmy #BlackSeaFleet
5:49 AM · Sep 14, 2022

Slavic broadcasters take different approaches as legal and societal efforts to combat propaganda impact worship and evangelism.

In short, the documentary was about how one specific NGO obtains and distributes non-lethal military gear (helmets, body armor, cars, drones, optics) to provisional Ukrainian military units. It is not about weapons, ammunition, or even the Ukrainian military. Why it was promoted in the way it was is a question for CBS to answer.

The episode does raise a fair question. How well do donor countries track the military aid they provide to Ukraine? As the Amnesty International person accurately points out, the weapon producer has responsibility for their weapons. That is how Germany has been able to restrict users of the Leopard 2 main battle tank from transferring them to Ukraine. That said, a pretty intense war is being waged, and large amounts of weaponry are captured, lost, and abandoned daily. Moreover, these weapons are at least as much Russia’s property as Ukraine’s. //

In July, Ukraine invited donor nations to set up processes to ensure their weaponry was making its way to the Ukrainian Army and created a commission to monitor weapons transfers. The US has a team headed by Brigadier General Garrick Harmon commanding the US Army Security Assistance Command in Ukraine. Weapons and aid are being managed according to NATO’s LOGFAS system. //

The amount of equipment flowing into a war zone is an obvious target for theft. In France in 1945 and 1946, entire US trains of supplies and munitions were hijacked and sold on the black market. Systems must be put in place to ensure that lethal aid, in particular, is accounted for. The CBS documentary did nothing to move that cause forward and significantly damaged it in the process.

President Joe Biden, speaking to donors at a Democratic fundraiser here, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “didn’t want to hear it” when U.S. intelligence gathered information that Russia was preparing to invade.

The remarks came as Biden was talking about his work to rally and solidify support for Ukraine as the war continues into its fourth month.

“Nothing like this has happened since World War II. I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain he” — meaning Russian President Vladimir Putin — “was going to go in, off the border.”

“There was no doubt,” Biden said. “And Zelensky didn’t want to hear it.”

Well, that’s nice. The empathizer-in-chief maligning a guy whose country is being invaded by nuclear-armed Russia, in order to gain a few claps at a fundraiser. Biden doing that is so on-brand because nothing is ever his fault. Inflation isn’t his fault, the economy isn’t his fault, Afghanistan wasn’t his fault, the border crisis isn’t his fault, and of course, he bears zero responsibility for Russia invading Ukraine. Do you understand how all this works now? //

From the beginning, Biden has treated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as some kind of grade-school dust-up, believing he can claim victory just by saying “I was right.” But as many of us, including Zelensky, pointed out at the time, there was never anything to be gained by pointing fingers or trying to be “right” in regards to calling an invasion happening. //

it’s highly unlikely that Zelensky “didn’t want to hear it.” Rather, he was clearly trying to put on a strong public front in the face of Putin’s threats, in the hope of deterring the invasion. Lastly, as I noted above, if Biden knew what was coming as he keeps bragging about, his lack of action, including preemptively preparing the US for the economic fallout, is even more inexcusable. In short, the president remains a pathetic, obfuscating leader who isn’t fit to hold his office. But what else is new?

“We’ve got more than 11,000 Starlink stations and they help us in our everyday fight on all the fronts,” Ukraine’s vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov told Politico. “We’re ready, even if there is no light, no fixed internet, through generators using Starlink, to renew any connection in Ukraine.” //

In April, a Ukrainian solider identified as “Dima” told journalist David Patrikarakos that the service was playing a key role in the resistance.

“I want to say one thing: @elonmusk’s Starlink is what changed the war in #Ukraine’s favor. #Russia went out of its way to blow up all our comms. Now they can’t. Starlink works under Katyusha fire, under artillery fire,” the soldier said, according to Patrikarakos’ Twitter thread detailing their interview.

The column of Russian military vehicles that bore down on Kyiv in the early days of the war was brought to a smoldering halt because a 15-year-old boy was helping to aim Ukrainian artillery.

Ukrainian teenager Andrii Pokrasa flew his drone over the Russian forces, relaying photos and coordinates to artillery units, effectively saving the capital city in late February, Canadian outlet Global News reported.

Will this gambit work? Can you cut a deal to rid yourself of sanctions imposed because you started a war of aggression if you promise not to starve a few million people to death? Even when there is no guarantee those people still won’t starve if sanctions are removed? Never lose sight of the fact that Putin is a strategic genius in the same way that “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” He’s dealing with self-serving idiots incapable of resolve, so don’t count out the EU shouting “Leeeeeroy Jenkins,” and coming to Putin’s rescue.

As I’ve mentioned before, my gut feeling is that Putin sees himself as the smartest guy he knows and has unshakable faith in his ability to maneuver. You can easily imagine Putin, rather than Barack Obama, saying, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” That kind of hubris and a realization that one’s political life, or real life, might depend upon a successful military outcome could easily lure a politician into deciding that he’s a better general than his generals.

What began as a straightforward U.S. policy of arming the Ukrainians has expanded into a dangerous and rapid escalation. //

Now, instead of simply helping Ukraine stave off invasion and conquest, U.S. policy seems to have shifted into something else entirely: the permanent weakening of Russia at any cost. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said so explicitly after a clandestine visit to Ukraine with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken last month. //

All of this amounts to a major policy shift on the part of the United States, writes Stevenson: “Whereas once the primary Western objective was to defend against the invasion, it has become the permanent strategic attrition of Russia.” This shift, he adds, has “coincided with the abandonment of diplomatic efforts.”

So what possible strategic gain does bleeding Russia in Ukraine hold for the United States? The risks of pursuing such a policy are immense, including the possibility of nuclear war between the world’s top two nuclear powers. If the Biden administration has some overarching goal in mind, it has not bothered to tell the American people. Instead, we are trundling along the road to war as if every decision we make is simply a reaction to Russian aggression.

But in fact, the war itself has shifted dramatically since late February, and conditions now are arguably more favorable to a cease-fire and a negotiated political settlement than they were even a month ago.

Captured Russian soldiers have accused their commanders of killing their own wounded troops rather than recovering them from the battlefield and sending them for treatment.

In a harrowing account to Ukrainian journalist Volodymyr Zolkin, the young intelligence soldiers described how one lieutenant colonel asked a wounded comrade if he could walk, the Mirror reported.

When the badly injured soldier replied that he could not, the high-ranking officer reportedly shot him – as well as several others — dead.

Another soldier told Zolkin, who has reported about Russian prisoners for Open Media Ukraine, that officers have “finished off their wounded.”

When the journalist asked him to elaborate, the soldier answered: “Just like that … a wounded soldier is lying on the ground, and a battalion commander shoots him dead from a gun,” according to the outlet.

“It was a young man, he was wounded,” he added. “He was on the ground. He was asked if he could walk, so he was shot dead with a gun.”

Finland formally declared its intent to join NATO Sunday as the historically neutral nation seeks to bolster its security amid Russia’s ongoing incursion into Ukraine.

The nation of roughly 5 million people shares a long border with Russia and the move is likely to escalate already searing regional tensions. //

Finland has been independent since 1917 and entered neutral status after a 1948 treaty with the Soviet Union.

The Nordic nation has a more than 800-mile border with Russia.

The second possibility is more interesting. Snake Island is about 170 miles from the Black Sea Fleet’s homeport of Sebastopol. The maximum range of the Neptune anti-ship missile is also 170 miles.

If the second option is on the table, then what we are looking at here is a shaping attack that is removing the ability of the Russians on Snake Island to resist a Ukrainian air assault operation in preparation for a deep attack neutralize the Black Sea Fleet.

A mixture of Neptune and British Brimstone missiles on Snake Island could neutralize the Russian Navy in the Black Sea. With suitable supporting air defense units on Snake Island and the Ukrainian coast, It would also open the area to Ukrainian air force operations. Assuming that the Ukrainians can sustain the garrison, it could become an unsinkable defensive position that could put paid to any attempt by Russia to conduct an amphibious operation or exercise naval power in the war in Ukraine.

The reason for my literary prelude is that many people are making a big deal about supplying Ukraine with high-performance aircraft and modern tanks. Of course, those would all be nice and will, I’m sure, happen in time. But, for the battle Ukraine is fighting right now, the right weapons are being supplied: modern artillery and lots of ammunition.

Ukraine started the war with about 1,800 Soviet-era artillery pieces. Many were in disrepair, and most did not have a trained gun crew assigned; they were missing meteorological equipment, gun chronographs, counterbattery radar, reliable ammunition, and a host of other things that makes the artillery the King of Battle and the God of War.

Nearly 200 modern artillery tubes have been pledged, and about half delivered. A third of those are self-propelled guns; the remainder is towed. Most are the excellent M-777 howitzer. Over 40 top-shelf multiple launchers are pledged, and about half are in Ukraine. Over thirty modern counterbattery radar units have been committed; about half have arrived. About 180,000 rounds of modern 155mm ammunition have been provided. //

A study of the early days of Putin’s War by the Royal United Services Institute has a very enlightening quote from an in-the-field interview. This quote is from page 3 of the study:

As a senior adviser to General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, noted, ‘anti-tank missiles slowed the Russians down, but what killed them was our artillery. That was what broke their units’. //

I’m an infantryman, but despite the inter-branch rivalry, I’ve never met an infantry leader who had any desire to go into combat without his artillery forward observer within arm’s reach. From its earliest days, artillery has been THE killer. As much as we infantrymen have a romance with the bayonet, artillery accounted for 70% of casualties in the European Theater in World War II (both sides, both fronts) and 60% of American casualties during the Korean War. Putin’s War in Ukraine gives us data points that nothing has changed. //

The artillery support Ukraine’s partners are assisting with is much more than delivering guns. Instead, Ukraine is getting top-quality guns plus the training, ammunition, and ISR support needed to turn it into a ferocious weapon to drive the Russians out of where they don’t belong and back to where they do.

uplateagain
13 hours ago edited
The problem the Russians are having all stem from their military being fundamentally structurally flawed. Their officer corps is over-rated, because it is in truth not a meritocracy. Promotion is achieved there through political connections to a far greater degree even than is common in the West..... and we can get quite political in our military associations and advancements. They are ridiculous about it.... especially at the higher ranks. That ends up meaning their senior military is rife with incompetence and corruption. Instead of identifying problems, assuming responsibility, and dealing with them, it's all about keeping problems hidden and passing blame when they are exposed. There was a time near the end of the Soviet Union when as much as 40% of the Russian interceptor force of MiG-25 jets was functionally inoperable, because the engines used pure grain alcohol as a coolant, and once the troops discovered that, it was routinely drained out of the jets and consumed or sold on the black market. The problem persisted for years, because nobody would take responsibility for admitting there was a problem and do something about it.

Russian Army tactical doctrine is sound in theory for the kinds of forces they have developed. But there seem to be relatively few officers who actually know how to execute it.... at least while dealing with the other (unforeseen) problems they suddenly find themselves overcome-by. They don't seem to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. And more importantly, they don't seem to know what leadership is, and it is not uncommon for Russian soldiers to be brutalized by their own officers. General Mikhail Mezentsev was recorded on a non-secure phone call demanding one of his troops... a private... be mutilated (he demanded an ear be cut off) because the general saw him improperly wearing a piece of uniform. Nobody seems to know anything about battlefield management or combined arms operations and they routinely violate operational security with predictable results. They can't seem to be able to set up a simple and secure supply train, and fail to adequately assess future logistical requirements. They don't trust and can't count on their troops and their troops can't count on them. And that brings up the second structural problem.

The second (and in my opinion even bigger problem... because if they didn't have it they could likely overcome the first) is the total lack of a competent NCO corps. Good NCOs can generally make up for bad officers. Because they lack competent NCOs, their troops are inadequately trained... and even more poorly motivated. The junior officers have to do everything that's required to keep individual troops functioning, much less begin the development of unit cohesion or concern themselves with learning how to lead a small unit in combat and deal with unforeseen contingencies. Put green Russian troops in a suddenly hot situation and it instantly becomes a complete fustercluck, with nobody seeming to have any idea how to assess or respond to threat. Equipment is poorly maintained, and troops have no confidence that anyone supposedly in leadership has any idea what they are doing..... because in truth, they don't. Not by Western standards anyway. NCOs are the folks that keep the total disarray from happening, train and focus the unit, develop unit cohesion, handle all the daily falderall, and develop leadership and initiative. The Russians don't have them. And no amount of experience and guidance from the top is ever going to make up for that. Not in a modern military conducting operations at the speed and with the lethality of the modern battlefield.

Because of these structural flaws, I really don't think it is going to make a whole lot of difference which multi-star is giving out the orders from the top. For as long as historians can remember, the Russian way of making war has been to put together huge masses of men and machines and march them right into the teeth of the enemy's best, eventually overcoming them essentially by force of sheer numbers... and without regard to casualties. It was sort of thought that with the development of modern weaponry and tactics, they'd become rather a force based not only capable of massive firepower, but additionally of competency and finesse. That doesn't seem to be the case, and the modern Russian army simply doesn't have enough bulk to it to be readily successful even in Ukraine because of the lack of that competency and finesse. After WWII, it was reported in several places that senior German officers hated fighting Americans because they could never be counted-on to do what they were supposed to do, and instead seemed all too often to operate on individual initiative rather than follow a comprehensive and predictable plan. The head of the German Kriegsmarine, was once quoted, "The reason that the American Navy does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the Americans practice chaos on a daily basis." ― Karl Dönitz

It's an idea nobody would ever even consider applying to the Russians.

Will they ultimately win in Ukraine? Likely yes. If they want-to badly enough. They have enough ultimate resources that they should be able to outlast the Ukrainians, even while getting their butts kicked all too often by Ukrainian forces deployed in inferior numbers in individual skirmishes. But it's clearly not 100% guaranteed.

And when you start talking about Putin taking personal responsibility for overall operational control.... the image that immediate popped into my head was that of Hitler in the Fuererbunker, commanding fine German infantry to disastrous results.

In short, everything about this story indicates it didn’t happen. There are no images of wrecks despite the crashes allegedly taking place in the suburbs of Kiev. There is virtually no media coverage. The Ukrainians never mention it.

Why did the IC “officials” who fed stuff to Delanian push this story out, and why Delanian and his co-authors didn’t attempt a fact check?

That leads me to how we know the inside-the-beltway folks think the war is going well for Ukraine. If it were going bad, we’d hear stories about the imminent fall of Kiev and how the stupid Ukrainians refused to use all the great intel they were getting. Instead, this story is how the fat-asses-wears-glasses set at Langley or wherever might as well be dispatching Spetsznaz troopers with a Louisville Slugger.

What needs to be investigated is why Delanian’s sources take credit for an event that appears to have been created by the Ukrainian propaganda machine and perpetrate yet another IC fraud on the American people. I suspect Delanian’s sources have nothing at all to do with Ukraine and are just passing along lunchroom gossip and watercooler talk so they can see themselves quoted.

When the Russian Black Sea flagship, the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, sank in a non-existent storm (BREAKING. Russian Flagship Sinks While Being Towed to Port) after being hit by two Neptune anti-ship missiles (BREAKING. Flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Hit by Ukrainian Missiles, Dead in the Water, Crew Evacuated), one unanswered question remained: was the Moskva carrying nuclear weapons? //

Chuck Pfarrer
@ChuckPfarrer
BROKEN ARROW: The Russian navy has deployed a deep diving submersible to the wreck of the cruiser Moskva. The unusual move of conducting a salvage operation in an active war zone adds credence to reports that Moskva carried nuclear weapons.
7:36 PM · Apr 22, 2022 //

The idea that conventional munitions or missile tubes would be worth this level of effort strikes me as ludicrous. Just as silly is the theory that the Russians are trying to recover bodies from the wreckage. The Black Sea is a closed environment; ships entering have to pass through The Straits, and Moskva’s wreck is a very short distance from the major Russian naval base at Sebastopol. Physical monitoring of vessels entering the Black Sea and the wreck site could provide eternal security. There is no danger of a repeat of the Glomar Explorer going after the wreck of the K-129 in the open Pacific.

While one can never rule out bureaucratic stupidity, my opinion is that the totality of the facts and circumstances indicate that one or more nuclear warheads are entombed in the Moskva. BBC has documented how the Soviets have at least two nuclear-powered and armed submarines sunk in Arctic waters. There is the K-27 in the Kara Sea and the K-159 in the Barents Sea. Neither show any sign of radioactive leakage. //

If nuclear weapons are on the bottom of the Black Sea, Russia could be trying to avoid a PR nightmare in case the Moskva is salvaged in the future, but the risks of that, as I outlined above, seem small. The other logical reason is that something about the warhead(s) makes them easier for a third party to arm than one would imagine.

All of this, of course, is speculation except for one thing. There is a marine salvage vessel with a submersible at the site of the Moskva, and there are no logical reasons that don’t involve nuclear weapons.

My professional opinion is that it should take at least six weeks for the units to rebuild, but I don’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin will be up for that (Intelligence Claims Putin Wants a Big Victory in Ukraine Before May 9). Likewise, I’d recommend the Russians try to mass their forces and focus on one objective, but it seems as though units are being fed into the fight as soon as they arrive, and, in my opinion, Russia is trying to do too much with too few forces.

As I see it, the upcoming campaign has three battles that Russia must win to achieve its territorial objectives. I would contend that Putin’s political objectives of deposing the Zelensky government, disbanding the Ukrainian army, and preventing Ukraine from having military alliances with the West are, barring some deus ex machina, out of reach. //

In my view, the Russians are in a very difficult position. The terrain they have to attack across in the north strongly favors the defenders. Their lines of supply will be hard-pressed to support the 70-80 BTGs they are staging there. There is also a race against time. More Ukrainian units are created and move into the battle area every day, and more heavy weapons arrive. Russia has to find that sweet spot where their units have rebuilt back to combat effectiveness, and the Ukrainians haven’t yet begun to field the weaponry sent to them. They also, in my view, have to win all three of these battles–holding Kherson, sealing off Mariupol, and taking positive control of Donbas–to have a chance of gaining their territorial objectives. Ukraine only has one must-win battle: Donbas.

In Poland, which boasts both by far the largest military and economy of the surveyed states, almost two-thirds of the public openly declared their support for a national nuclear weapons program.

The change in attitudes is striking. When Poles were asked the same question in 2018, 83.6% favored abolishing nuclear weapons. However, the newfound realization that a non-nuclear country can be rather helpless in a confrontation with a nuclear-armed enemy has led Poland to request the US to base nuclear weapons in Poland; see Poland Says That if the U.S. Has Some Spare Nukes They’d Be Happy to Take Care of Them. //

Even when Russia loses this war with Ukraine, you can bet Putin will still use threats of using nuclear weapons to try and intimidate anyone who offends him. He will also believe that his possession of these weapons will prevent NATO from taking action under Article 5.

The strategic question is how do we live in a world in which the collapsing Third World kleptocracy that is Russia possesses nuclear weapons but can’t use them to bully other nations or drag us into a nuclear conflict. //

The only way we break the cycle of cringing in fear every time Putin has bad borscht and decides to threaten someone with nukes is to place Russian cities at risk. We can do this by either walking away from the non-proliferation regime that has limited the ownership of nuclear weapons or by providing some allies with nuclear-capable delivery systems and holding the weapons until that nation requests their release. It’s not a wonderful thought to contemplate, but it is better than endless wars in Eastern Europe brought on by Russia’s ability to threaten nuclear attack unless appeased.