One wonders to what degree China has fed into the paranoia of Kim Jong-un, who the other day pronounced that North Korea's status as a “nuclear state” is “irreversible.” China could have stopped this if they wanted to; after all, the North Korean economy would have collapsed long ago and its people uncontrollably restive if China hadn’t been propping it up. Why would China see an unstable neighbor as helpful to its strategic interests—unless, of course, it serves as a useful distraction from its own shenanigans?
But then again we have our own very unstable “genius” in this country in Donald Trump, who is now claiming that he didn’t declassify those documents, although that doesn’t explain why he has them; it has been suggested that some of the documents detail foreign nuclear secrets, and that Trump or someone else could use them for “sale” or blackmail. However, Trump’s attorneys—many of whom who served in the past face discipline, disbarment or even jail time for wasting various courts’ time with what they knew to be false election fraud claims—are now claiming that at least some of the documents have to do with “attorney-client privilege,” which opens up another can of worms if they have to do Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice and likely his January 6 activities.
At the present time, Vladimir Putin is probably feeling a bit paranoid too. Ukrainian forces have made some headway in their offensive operations, or at least enough to embarrass Putin along with those politicians, press and public that supported the war with such nationalist fervor. In some sectors Russian soldiers are allegedly in retreat abandoning half their equipment; an adviser at the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs “joked” that the Russians were engaging in a “lend-lease” program for the Ukrainian military. This war appears very much like Stalin’s invasion of Finland in 1940; after initially seizing territory, the Finns found their footing and caused an embarrassing stalemate that eventually insured its survival as an independent state.
If there was unrest in Russia during that war, it was mostly tempered by memories of the “Great Purge” during which a million Russians regarded as ideologically unreliable were murdered, including high-ranking military officers. Recently Putin forced the passage of laws for the same purpose, criminalizing public dissent of his actions; however, it seems that nationalism in Russia is still a strong impulse in the country and a majority of the people at least initially supported the war in the belief that it would take only a matter of days or weeks.
But with the war continuing to drag on with the Western-supplied Ukrainian military not disappearing any time soon, the far-right, pro-war element in the Russian media has now taken to express anger at Putin for his failure to conduct a full mobilization and put the country on a total war footing. A few are even demanding that he resign; Putin apparently is tolerating these people because of their support for the war, but considering the fact that Western sanctions are damaging the economy, these people are probably more dangerous than those who would be demanding an end to the war.
As reported by the Daily Beast, some politicians outside of Putin’s rubberstamping Duma are demanding an end to the war. Municipal deputies in St. Petersburg...
…sent a letter to the Duma in Moscow demanding that it seek the removal of Putin and charge him with “treason” for harming the country with his “special military operation.” It is rather surprising that these people now feel “safe” to say such things in public, even adding that “We believe that President Putin’s decision to begin the (war) is harming Russia’s security and its citizens.” Deputies from Moscow's Lomonosovsky district went even further, blasting Putin:
The rhetoric that you and your subordinates use has been riddled with intolerance and aggression for a long time, which in the end effectively threw our country back into the Cold War era. Russia has again begun to be feared and hated, we are once again threatening the whole world with nuclear weapons. We ask you to relieve yourself of your post due to the fact that your views and your governance model are hopelessly outdated and hinder the development of Russia and its human potential.
Such views are not typical of Russian television, unfortunately. If there is still a “free press” in Russia, it is mainly between competing reactionary groups on the issue of whether or not to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield or on foreign capitals. According to AlterNet: “It was a wild night on Russian state television as a panel of Kremlin propagandists sparred over the ramifications of President Vladimir Putin's ill-begotten invasion of Ukraine and the world's responses to it.” On Russia 1, host Olga Skabeeva tried to steer the panel discussion toward the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) activities concerning a Russian occupied nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
Things quickly veered off course as “international relations consultant and political analyst Dmitry Yegorchenkov gave a lecture” about the “decline” of the West, calling it “predators,” which is what the West generally thinks of Russia and China, and expressing concerns about the alleged intention of “weakening” Russia, such as imposing “unjust” sanctions by such international organizations like sports anti-doping watchdogs. Things then got worse as a Duma member named Mikhail Delyagin declared that Russia should “finally start to strike the decision-making centers” in the West, meaning places like London and Washington D.C., believing that for Russia to expect to be treated “fairly” was like believing in “mermaids and house gnomes.”
To assuage him, Skabeeva assured him that“They'll force us to strike the decision-making centers. We're waiting for that.” Still, Delyagin’s suggestion that Russia nuke Western capitals, and fears that NATO was going to blow-up the Russian-occupied nuclear site apparently elicited chuckles as his colleagues tried to get him off the subject. "Don't laugh," he said to a “snickering” Skabeeva: "Don't you laugh."
He went on to say that Russia was a corrupt state, and that it was entering “a very long, very painful, very frightening period of instability awaits us. We're in the very beginning stages of this instability. We see that Western nations are led by deranged individuals. They're being led by people who are irresponsible due to their intellectual level.” He also took the time to accuse the system of oligarchs as representing a “criminal” economy, and went on to say that regardless of the outcome of the war, instability would continue even if Russia did what was “necessary,” meaning deploying nukes to select targets in the West
Then Skabeeva tried to tone things down, insisting that it was foolish to court a nuclear clash between Russia and the U.S., and that “In the context of everything you said, there are frightening global issues. If the nuclear apocalypse comes about, as (Ukrainian President) Volodymyr Zelenskyy is hinting, then all of your long-term strategy is not needed.”
AlterNet also reported about another news program featuring Kremlin “propaganda puppets,” including another member of the Duma, Aleksey Zhuravlyov, who “has been a boisterous proponent of deploying Moscow's new Sarmat Intercontinental Ballistic Missile in a preemptive strike against North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations.” He apparently believes it is “safe” to deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine because the West “won’t do anything.” It was noted, however, that the Sarmat is a high yield, intercontinental missile unsuited for tactical use and likely to cause as much harm to Russia being next door to Ukraine. Zhuravlyov apparently meant this as a threat to the West, as he went on to say he doesn’t “doubt” that tactical nuclear weapons will eventually be used in Ukraine.
However, the moderator, Evgeny Popov, intervened in an attempt to calm things down, insisting that using nuclear weapons “is the very last argument.” This didn’t stop Zhuravlyov, who again insisted that it was “OK” because “no one (meaning NATO) will step in to defend Ukraine, no matter what kind of weapons are used there. They're afraid of tactical nuclear weapons," he declared. Popov insisted that "I'm certain that our Armed Forces are capable of achieving all the goals set before them without using such things capable of destroying the entire planet. God willing. No need for that.” There was more back-and-forth about the potential for nuclear annihilation, with Popov pointing out that Russia’ alleged “hypersonic” anti-nuclear missile defenses were not stopping “oil depot and military units in Belgorod from being hit every day.”
As we can see here, while Russian television is not being permitted to debate whether-or-not the Ukraine war was justified, it is entertaining the masses with a “debate” about a “quick fix” to the Russian military’s disappointing performance and continued loss of life by employing nuclear weapons. There are apparently a few “voices of reason” who are concerned about the mental stability of certain lawmakers, although this may be an effort to prop-up Putin by inviting the most crackpot guests on news commentary programs to demonstrate at least that he is more “stable” than they are at the moment. How the Russian public is reacting to all of this is unknown, since, of course, expressing a contrary opinion in public can still by law put them in prison.
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