Russia's military defeat in Ukraine and the threat of using nuclear weapons

Nika Chitadze

Professor of the International Black Sea University 

Director of the Center for International Studies 

After one defeat after another on the front line in the last few months, the representatives of the Russian political elite and Russian President Putin himself talk about the defense of "Russian territory by all means, including the use of nuclear weapons." After Putin announced the annexation of four districts of the occupied territories of Ukraine - Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson and "joined" them to the Russian Federation, and later lost the Russian political elite and Russian President Putin control over the largest part of the Kherson district, the threat of nuclear blackmail from the Kremlin became more serious.

The fact is that for the further liberation of these occupied Ukrainian regions, of course, the Ukrainians will not stop fighting until their final liberation, and the Kremlin will announce that the attacks are now directly on the territory of Russia, and it has the right to "defend" itself by all available means, including mass with weapons of destruction.

 

It is worth noting the fact that Russia has 6,000 nuclear warheads, of which more than 2,000 should be tactical, but the word "tactical" among military experts and perhaps even in certain circles of society creates a mood as if the main threat is only strategic nuclear weapons that can destroy the world. roll it out", and tactical nuclear bombs seem like nothing much and will not change the future of war.

 

The matter is much more complicated - there is not a strong separation between tactical and strategic weapons, if we focus not on their carriers, but on the nuclear charges themselves.

For example, the strategic Soviet/Russian intercontinental ballistic missile "Satan" (which, ironically, is manufactured in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, which Russia is mercilessly bombing today) can have one 20-megaton nuclear warhead or ten 500-kiloton warheads.

 

The power of a nuclear bomb is determined by the amount of trinitrotoluene, that is, how many tons of TNT must be detonated to match the power of a nuclear explosion.

 

Nuclear weapons are divided into five groups according to their power: ultra-small (less than one kiloton), small (1-10 kilotons), medium (10-100 kilotons), high-powered (100 kilotons to one megaton), and super-powerful (more than one megaton).

The smallest, only one kiloton, this Soviet/Russian 152 mm caliber nuclear artillery projectile produces a 3.5 km high "mushroom" cloud upon detonation

 

On August 6, 1945, the American atomic bomb detonated at a height of 600 m over the Japanese city of Hiroshima had a yield of 13 to 18 kilotons of TNT, and three days later, on August 9, the atomic bomb over the city of Nagasaki produced an explosion of 21 kilotons of TNT.

Nuclear explosive devices can be placed into seven main classes of weapons. These are aviation bombs, aviation missiles, ballistic and cruise missile warheads, artillery projectiles, depth, bottom and bottom naval mines, naval torpedos, and ground-engineering mines.

Today, in the war with Ukraine, the Russian army uses 23 types of conventional weapons, in which an explosive device containing TNT and hexane can be replaced with a nuclear charge in a few hours (or even faster) without visually making any difference from the outside, although before combat use

Nuclear weapons can be divided into tactical, operational-tactical, and strategic purposes.

At the tactical level, nuclear weapons can be used with special artillery shells of 152, 155, and 203 mm caliber, as well as with bombs and missiles of front-line bombers and tactical aviation.

At the operational-tactical level, long-range aviation carrying nuclear weapons, as well as short- and medium-range cruise and ballistic missiles are used. Intercontinental and submarine ballistic missiles and strategic missile-bomber aircraft operate at a strategic distance, although this division is still conditional since no one can prevent the crew of a strategic missile-bomber from using tactical nuclear weapons within a radius of several hundred kilometers.

During a nuclear explosion, five types of damaging factors are produced: shock waves, thermal radiation, penetrating radiation, radioactive contamination, and electromagnetic pulse.

Shock wave - after a nuclear explosion with a power equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT, the air shock wave covers 1 kilometer in 1.4 seconds, 2 kilometers in 4 seconds, 3 kilometers in 7 seconds, and 5 kilometers in 12 seconds. It is dangerous for humans, however, after seeing the flash of a nuclear explosion, there is still little time left to seek shelter or at least lie on the ground.

 

Heat radiation - after the atomic explosion in Hiroshima, silhouettes of people were visible on the streets of the city and on the walls of the destroyed buildings, which was the result of the release of very high temperatures.

The heat radiation of a nuclear explosion lasts for several seconds, and if a person manages to cover himself with an opaque object (for example, a wall) during this time, then he will survive this particular damaging factor of a nuclear explosion. If there is nothing to cover, the person should immediately be laid face down with the feet on the side of the explosion, and the face should be covered with the hands. Under no circumstances should you look at a nuclear explosion - it can cause complete blindness.

Penetrating radiation - this is ionizing radiation, when a stream of atomic nuclei, photons, or other elementary particles penetrates a substance and turns neutral molecules and atoms into ions. It causes acute radiation sickness in the human body and depends on the strength of the received dose - in case of a large dose of radiation in a short period, which will certainly happen when the epicenter of the nuclear explosion is near, there is almost no chance of survival.

Radioactive Contamination - A person can survive the shock wave, heat radiation, and penetrating radiation of a nuclear explosion and emerge from the underground shelter happy to have survived, but he faces another hidden, but very invisible danger - the radiation background created by highly radioactive isotopes.

Electromagnetic pulse is the only damaging factor of a nuclear explosion, which does not directly affect human health, but it disables electrical equipment, and if people are sitting in a passenger plane at that time, they can become victims of an airplane accident.

There is another, no less mass-damaging factor, which will inevitably follow the combat use of nuclear weapons - this is fear and panic, involving millions of people who may have witnessed the nuclear "mushroom" themselves or seen it live on television...

The use of tactical nuclear weapons is defined in the theater of combat operations, on the front line, and in the close rear of the enemy. Its power equivalent to TNT is relatively small (defined as a few tens of kilotons) and more attention is paid to the accuracy of hitting the target.

The Soviet tactical nuclear arsenal (which was the largest in the world and exceeded twenty thousand, of which 350 tactical nuclear charges in the form of missile warheads, aviation bombs, artillery shells, and mines were kept on the territory of Georgia until the spring of 1989), Russia currently has no less than two thousand charges that can be installed in the warheads of "Iskanders" or winged "Calibers".

If the power of the atomic bomb dropped by the Americans in Hiroshima was up to 18 kilotons, on the modern Russian operational-tactical aero ballistic missile "Iskander M" it is 50 kilotons, that is, a tactical nuclear warhead with a power equivalent to the explosion of 50 thousand tons of TNT can be installed, which, as a result of its initiation, can be installed at a distance of at least 3-5 kilometers Everything in the radius will be destroyed. A single tactical nuclear warhead of this power can destroy the face of a small town. After such information, it is a little strange to claim that tactical nuclear weapons are not much more dangerous than conventional hex bombs.