Would Putin Use Nukes if He Has to?

 If Putin begins losing the war, would he be willing to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine to stop his defeat?  We have always said we didn’t think Putin would just go home, admit defeat and lick his wounds off.  We think he would do anything including using nukes if his back is against the wall.

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RFE/RL: In a recent essay, you argued that Putin will indeed resort to the use of nukes to avert defeat in Ukraine. An overwhelming majority of Western experts and analysts have been saying this is an unlikely scenario. You don’t seem to share that optimism. Why?

Ryan: I’m not the first to warn his threats are serious. Many people say that his threats are serious, but then they quickly say, “However, they are not likely.” But this undermines the first part of the sentence. Why would you take a threat seriously if it’s not likely to happen?

I’m one of the few people who has said that these threats are not only serious but they’re likely to happen. That makes a threat urgent — something which others are not saying. If these threats are recognized as urgent, then the governments will do something about it; if they’re not urgent, or if they’re not likely, then the governments have many other things on their plate that they want to take care of that are urgent.

I’m not an alarmist, although people may want to call me one because of what I’ve said and written. But my intent is not to alarm civilians. For the people living in that region — Ukrainians and Russians alike — this is not a theoretical discussion.

Instead, my audience are the political leaders in Moscow, Washington, Kyiv, and NATO capitals. They underestimate the likelihood that Putin will follow through on his threats to use nuclear weapons. When they underestimate that, when they consider these threats unlikely, they push aside the question of what to do about it.

We don’t have that luxury anymore. We must think ahead and think now about what to do for medical preparedness, the humanitarian-aid preparedness, military preparedness to operate on a nuclear battlefield. All these things — we need to be doing more about that.

RFE/RL: So you’re not buying the argument that Putin has been categorically convinced not to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, that there would be catastrophic consequences for that, if you take Victoria Nuland’s quote, for example?

Ryan: I don’t know that anything we say or do in the West would ultimately cause Putin to either use a nuclear weapon or not use a nuclear weapon. This is his decision. He has shown that he’s making decisions about this without the support of many world leaders [or] even people within his own military and government.

He’s had to silence a lot of people who spoke out against that…. Because Putin is making his decision based on his own situation and on the situation of the Donbas regions, Zaporizhzhya, what they have taken there, he will use the nuclear weapon if he cannot escalate conventionally to prevent the loss of those things.

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2023/06/us-ex-general-says-russia-benefits-from-dam-blast-putin-likely-to-use-nuclear-weapons-rather-than-lose-in-ukraine/