Does the risk of nuclear war exist?

The deterrent of nuclear weapons was one of the levers that maintained world stability in the years of Cold War. Only threats, never resulted in an open conflict that would have been catastrophic for the whole of humanity. Now the threat returns. Vladimir Putin it put the Russian deterrent force, which also includes nuclear forces, on alert against a possible NATO intervention in Ukraine.

Putin

It is a signal that worries the world not because it is a direct threat of use, but a hypothesis, a threat, a way to increase an already very high tension. The Russian president spoke of “Statements and aggressive attitude” of various leaders of NATO member countries and has defined Western sanctions as illegitimate as well as condemned the supply of arms to Ukraine by European states.

Minsk

His statements were followed by those of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko: “We agree with Putin to use these weapons, which will make Poles and Lithuanians pass the desire to make war”. Lukashenko he spoke to French President Macron and explained that the sanctions are pushing Russia towards a third world war.

Threats

Already Thursday, at the beginning of the military operation, Putin had threatened “never seen consequences” for those who had opposed the Russian troops and had spoken of his country as the “strongest nuclear power in the world”. These are unveiled threats, but which experts do not believe can become reality for now. “I don’t think an atomic conflict is a likely consequence of this crisis,” he said Dan Smith director of SIPRI, the Stockholm Institute for Peace Research. For the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, who spoke to CNN, Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric is “dangerous and irresponsible”.

The goal is to dissuade NATO from helping Ukrainedo not use nuclear weapons directly because Moscow is aware that some NATO countries have an equally powerful arsenal.

How much nuclear

There are 11,000 nuclear warheads between Russia and the United States. Before the collapse of the Berlin Wall there were 70,000. Since the 1980s there has been a long period of disarmament, never total. From the first Reagan Gorbachev treaties, we have come to Trump, who came out of some of those agreements, and to the current Russia which, due to sanctions, would be ready to abandon all nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Agreements have been made between the United States, Russia, China, France and Great Britain. They are not recognized by other nuclear powers such as India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

On the Italian territory there are part of the nuclear warheads that belong to the USA. They are in the US bases in the territory from Ghedi, in the Brescia area, in Aviano, in Friuli.

Ukraine has no nuclear warheads. He had some on his territory at the time of the dissolution of the USSR, but he returned them to Moscow after the 1994 Budapest memorandum. Putin’s fear is that US nuclear weapons in Europe will be moved more and more to the eastern borders.

In Russia there is one to start nuclear weapons chain of three people, in addition to the president, the defense minister and the joint chief of staff. Without one of these codes there is no possibility of using weapons.

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