A nuclear strike may be Vladimir Putin's only option in Ukraine, because his army has already lost a million people (killed or wounded), and besides, the federation is on the verge of bankruptcy.
This is what British Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon wrote in his article for The Telegraph.
Putin said that the plans and goals of his military operation to subjugate Ukraine will not change. He also said that he “hopes that nuclear weapons will not have to be used“. All of Putin's previous threats of nuclear weapons were calculated to scare Ukraine's allies and reduce their support. Now the situation for the Russian president regarding the war in Ukraine has changed, the author writes.
The situation for Putin has changed in the past few weeks in almost every aspect related to his war against Ukraine. He thought that after Trump scolded President Zelensky in the White House a few months ago, Ukraine was his. But that did not happen.
Russian losses in the war in Ukraine, killed and wounded, are now approaching 1 million people. Over the past year, Moscow has managed to make only marginal progress, and even a country like Russia cannot afford such losses.
The production of Russian military equipment is mainly financed by revenues from oil exports. However, OPEC is increasing production, and the most powerful oil country, Saudi Arabia, is demanding a price of $ 50 per barrel. At current spending levels, this will soon bankrupt Moscow.
In this context, it is not difficult to conclude that the only way Putin can achieve his goals in Ukraine is to use his tactical nuclear weapons to quickly defeat the Ukrainian armed forces, since he assumes that the two European nuclear powers, Britain and France, will not retaliate with their own nuclear weapons.
The West has only one option to prevent this scenario. NATO and Donald Trump must demonstrate their readiness to use their conventional superiority and even their nuclear forces if Putin dares to resort to this nightmare scenario. The West can checkmate him by restoring the balance of nuclear weapons in Europe.