These objectives would be accomplished through a strategic air campaign that would destroy the totality of Ukraine's critical infrastructure, severely impacting command and control and logistics of the Ukrainian military.
According to Gurulyov, such a campaign could last up to three weeks, after which the Ukrainian military would be a sitting duck for the newly reinforced Russian military.
Gurulyov was confident that the reinforced Russian military would be able to defeat the NATO-enhanced Ukrainian armed forces without resorting to the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Indeed, Gurulyov was adamant that tactical nuclear weapons would never, and indeed, could never, be used by Russia against Ukraine.
He was less so when it came to using tactical nuclear weapons against NATO.
Gurulyov was convinced that the nature of Russia's military victory over Ukraine would be so decisive that NATO might feel compelled to intervene to stop Russia.
If NATO were to indeed dispatch troops into Ukraine, and those troops engaged in large-scale ground conflict with Russian forces, then Gurulyov envisioned that Russian nuclear weapons could, in fact, be used against NATO targets.
Gurulyov was convinced that the United States, fearing Russian strategic nuclear-retaliation capabilities, would not unleash its own nuclear arsenal against Russia, even if NATO were struck by Russian nuclear weapons. But here Gurulyov was operating from a false premise - U.S. nuclear doctrine clearly states that "They [Russia ] must understand that there are no possible benefits from non-nuclear aggression or limited nuclear escalation."
Indeed, U.S. nuclear doctrine emphasizes that "any nuclear escalation will fail to achieve their objectives and will instead result in unacceptable consequences for them [Russia]."
From these two fundamental misunderstandings - that a) Russia could be preparing to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine that would generate a non-nuclear response on the part of the U.S., and b) Russia believes that the U.S. would not respond with nuclear weapons if Russia were to use its own nuclear arsenal against NATO - the world now faces the real prospect of imminent nuclear conflict between the U.S. and Russia.
From the U.S. perspective, Russia's unwillingness to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine underscores the overall impotence of Russia and its leadership, and therefore opens the door for decisive NATO intervention, including boots on the ground, in case of any Russian non-nuclear threat against Kiev itself.
From the Russian perspective, the documented U.S. reluctance to employ nuclear weapons in the case of a decisive Russian military victory over Ukraine opens the door for Russia 's use of a tactical nuclear weapon against NATO in the case of a major NATO military intervention in Ukraine. From this foundation of misrepresentation and misunderstanding only disaster can ensue.
Putin, in announcing the formal incorporation of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Lugansk, into the Russian Federation, has turned up the rhetorical heat regarding Ukraine and the "collective West."
Soon words will be transformed into action, initiating the very scenarios U.S. military planners and Russian authorities, such as Andrey Gurulyov, have spoken about.
We are, literally on the eve of destruction. Now is the time for the kind of political maturity leaders rarely demonstrate.
The Onus is on Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin to make sure that even while events on the ground in Europe devolve into chaos and violence, the leaders of the world's two largest nuclear arsenals do not allow emotion to get the better of reason.
The consequences of failure in this regard are, for humanity, terminal.
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