U.S. Fretting Over Ukrainian Tactics Raises Risk Putin Will Go Nuclear

U.S. officials have leaked news that the U.S. had admonished Ukrainian officials because intelligence agencies believe that Ukraine likely was behind an August car bomb attack in Moscow that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a virulent Russian nationalist. This strange leak, detailed in the New York Times, was foolish, and, with concerns that Russia might turn to nuclear weapons echoing throughout Washington, America’s public fretting complicates efforts to exploit disorder in Moscow.

By talking to reporters, American officials with knowledge of U.S. intelligence—agencies that overestimated Russian fighting prowess and predicted Ukraine would fall in days—openly credited Ukraine for the assassination. Ukraine denies involvement in the attack.

Upset at being taken by surprise, and rather than simply getting about the tough business of finding out just what Ukraine might be up to, “American officials” turned to the press, whining that they were “frustrated with Ukraine’s lack of transparency about its military and covert plans, especially on Russian soil.”

American officials justified the leak as being “crucial to curb what they see as dangerous adventurism, particularly political assassinations.” It is absolutely inexplicable, just as Russia’s top leadership is showing signs of cracking up, for American officials of any sort to say anything about mysterious and destabilizing deaths within Russia. If Russian elites are turning on each other, it offers more plausible deniability, and arguably there’s nothing wrong with sowing a bit more disorder.

Internecine warfare within the ranks of Russian leadership is always a deadly thing. Violence is part of modern Russian society, and prominent Russians have been dying in mysterious circumstances for years.

If, say, the Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin or Chechnya’s strongman Ramzan Kadyrov “accidently” fell from a window after criticizing Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov, the “who-done-it” would be a matter for the Russian equivalent of the New York Post’s “Page Six” gossip column, fodder for Russian water-cooler chatter. But now, after America’s ill-advised public trip to the fainting couch, Ukraine could be blamed for any and all instances of “therapeutic blood-letting” in Russian high society.

Public American fretting is as unhelpful as it is unrealistic. Life in Putin’s inner circle can be nasty, brutish and short.

If concern is growing in Washington that Russia may be considering further steps to intensify the war, potentially renewing efforts to assassinate prominent Ukrainian leaders, then handle those intelligence issues in private. Even if Ukraine is being overly risky, don’t give Russia a public casus belli to “go nuclear” by talking to the media about Ukrainian tactics.

Is Russia Mulling The “Nuclear Option” As A Decapitation Tool?

America’s sudden concern for top Ukrainian leaders is somewhat strange, since Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been a marked man from the moment Russia’s illegal invasion began. Reports vary, but Ukraine’s president has already suffered through somewhere between three to around a dozen assassination attempts, and, now that Zelenskyy has come into his own as a highly-regarded war leader, his value as a potential target has only grown.

Putin knows that Zelenskyy’s loss—coupled with Ukraine’s ongoing failure to openly detail a succession plan and publicly promote some potential future leaders—would shatter Ukraine, upending Ukrainian politics and weakening Ukrainian resolve.

If Putin could kill Zelenskyy, he would. At this point, assassination is Russia’s only viable route to victory over Ukraine.

And that leads to a scary conclusion. For Russia, the potential gain from eliminating Zelenskyy outweighs almost any likely cost imposed by any international response to any of the weapons used to do it.

Other concerns that Russia might use nuclear weapons on the conventional battlefield are overrated—the battlefield is too dispersed and Russia’s military failings too widespread for a tactical nuclear weapon to make much of a difference in the likely outcome. The only viable way Putin might “go nuclear” is if the attack was likely to remove Zelenskyy.

Such a drastic move makes sense. Under Putin, Russia has never worried much about assassinations. In Moscow politics, violent or mysterious deaths are a fact of life. And even in the aftermath of egregious Russian-sponsored attacks, employing, for example, chemical or radiological weapons on foreign soil, the wider global response has been mild. Even worse, the West’s timorous responses to Russia’s repeated provocations have only taught Putin that assassination is a convenient and low-cost way to eliminate potential problems.

The challenge for Putin is that Russia does not seem to have the resources to take Zelenskyy’s life via “conventional” underhanded means. Ukraine’s president is too well protected, and Russia simply cannot get close enough to shoot him, blow him up, poison him or throw him out a window.

But Zelenskyy is an active leader. He can and does travel, deriving strength from mixing with Ukraine’s people. But he sets aside his protective bubble as he moves around, and, when he does, the Ukrainian leader’s movements can be detected. Given the limitations of Russian access and targeting, only a relatively nearby nuclear-armed ballistic missile has the speed and destructive reach to potentially kill the otherwise well-protected Ukrainian leader.

A nuclear-tipped 9K720 Iskander missile needs less than seven minutes to hit a target. But, as a decapitation tool, it isn’t perfect. In Kyiv or any other urban area with extensive bunker systems, a nuclear decapitation effort has a low likelihood of success. With warning, Zelenskyy can get safely underground quite quickly. On the other hand, a strike while Zelenskyy is on the move changes the odds of survival significantly—while also reducing the likely amount of collateral damage.

This is the type of nihilistic gamble Putin just might take.

Eliminating Zelenskyy in a nuclear blast removes an international rallying point for a unified, global anti-Putin response. Without Zelenskyy, Ukraine will flail, trying to respond to a massive attack while determining if the president is alive or incapacitated. Any new Ukraine leader would be far less formidable, offering Putin and his henchmen ideal openings to degrade international unity or directly meddle in Kiev’s fragile democracy.

If given the opportunity, Putin will kill to get his way in Kyiv—and you can bet that nobody in Russia would go fret to the New York Times about the propriety of such tactics.