Russia Almost Nuked Ukraine in 2022

If you’ve been reading my content on Medium for a while, you might recall in late 2022 when I was raising the alarm about Putin’s imminent use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

Of course, I took the criticism on the nose: Wes, you’re being an alarmist. Wes, you’re overreacting.

Now, new reporting from CNN shows how close we were — but instead of feeling vindicated, I feel even worse.

No one wants to be right if you’re predicting nuclear war.

In the fall of 2022, Putin and his clown army were having a rough time subduing the Ukrainian people.

In a single week in October of that year, the sole bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with Russia had been rocked by an explosion, collapsing part of it into the sea.

Putin opened the bridge personally in 2018 and it had been a cherished pet project.

Also, a Ukrainian drone attacked a Russian Tu-22M bomber base, which has been a hub for strikes on Ukrainian targets, 200 miles from the Ukrainian border, deep inside Russia.

Not to mention Putin’s army was, at the time, collapsing on multiple fronts as Ukraine continued their relentless counteroffensive.

Back in 2022, I wrote about the signs to watch out for if Putin was about to launch a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

For instance, any new deployment of B-2 bombers or the WC-135R “nuke sniffing” aircraft to Britain would be a huge red flag.

Any increase in U.S. nuclear readiness is a clear signal that something is up.

And Vice President Kamala Harris and senior congressional leaders suddenly canceling their public schedules would be a warning sign.

Alarmingly, by September of 2022, I watched as some of those signs started to manifest and my contacts in the intelligence community became very concerned that Putin was about to break the nuclear taboo.

Because of this, I wrote several articles right here on Medium about how Putin’s use of a nuke in Ukraine would unfold.

To paraphrase myself, I calculated that Putin would either detonate a tactical nuke in an uninhabited part of Ukraine or the Black Sea under Russia’s “escalate to de-escalate” nuclear doctrine.

What is escalate to de-escalate?

Essentially, Putin feels that detonating a nuke is such a shocking show of force, that it might freeze the conflict while the world figures out how to respond. If his troops were in danger of being completely ejected from Ukraine, as it appeared in 2022, I estimated that he might just push the button.

I figure that NATO would have three options to respond:

Option 1 — Do nothing

The world freezes.

Countries that were previously on the fence about Russia now turn against it — including China.

The U.S. says some strong words against the Putin regime.

Retired generals on MSNBC talk about how smart Biden is for avoiding the risk of nuclear war.

Retired generals on Fox News talk about how weak Biden is for doing nothing.

Russia becomes even more isolated.

Option 2 — Limited unconventional warfare and a no-fly zone

Biden authorizes numerous U.S. Navy assets into the Black Sea (however, due to the Montreux Convention, U.S. aircraft carriers would be unable to enter.)

He also initiates a NATO no-fly-zone over Ukraine, a calculated risk that could escalate into full-scale war.

Biden steps up human intelligence collection in Moscow (HUMINT) and considers cyberattacks on Russia’s infrastructure.

He authorizes U.S. special operations to enter Ukraine, under the guise of counterproliferation of WMDs, who then perform a range of missions from airfield control, direct action, special reconnaissance, and information operations.

Option 3 — NATO enters the Russo-Ukrainian War with Conventional Forces

Let’s face it — the U.S. need not escalate to the use of nuclear weapons to defeat Russian forces in Ukraine.

“I expect (the president) to say we’re in a new situation, and the U.S. will directly enter the war against Russia to stop this government that has not only broken so many international laws and violated human rights but also now violated the nuclear taboo,” said Evelyn Farkas, a former top Pentagon official for Russia and now executive director of the McCain Institute. “Putin will be signing the order on changing the regime.”

The U.S. and Russia will openly shoot at each other for the first time in history — outside of a few select instances in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Syria.

At the very least, NATO might strike the Russian unit that launched the nuke and wipe out Russia’s Black Sea Fleet for good measure.

We now know that the United States had been “preparing rigorously” in late 2022 for a potential nuclear strike on Ukraine when Putin’s army was facing ‘one setback after another’ on the battlefield.

In fact, it was only the intervention of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s Xi Jinping who were able to somehow talk Putin off the ledge.

Some in the intelligence community found solace in the fact that Russia would likely only attack with a “tactical” nuke, also known as a battlefield nuke.

But making a part of Ukraine uninhabitable for a thousand years, with a 5-kiloton tactical nuke attached to an Iskander Missile, is still a pretty bad day for the world.

The fact that I was proven right to be concerned, and not just overreacting, brings me little joy.

New reporting by CNN’s Jim Sciutto reveals how shockingly close we came in 2022.

U.S. preparations for nuclear war against Russia were not just based on fear, it was based on some new information that the intelligence community picked up.

In the fall of 2022, while I was writing about Putin’s imminent use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the National Security Council was establishing a series of meetings to put contingency plans in place in case he did.

And this is, perhaps, the most surreal part of this invasion: We are now talking about, and preparing for, thermonuclear war in a way that would have been normal fifty years ago — but now, is supposed to be a relic of the Cold War.

The day that it truly hit home in 2022 was the day my kids came home from school and asked about how we would survive a nuclear war — apparently, teachers and kids at school were thinking about the unthinkable.

But the big takeaway from this CNN report is this: What if Russia starts losing again? (Which will be inevitable at some point.)

If nukes are an option for Putin, will we be so lucky again when the Russians start suffering new setbacks? Ukraine will no doubt make battlefield gains with the introduction of new Ukrainian F-16s and a flood of U.S. weapon systems once the shipments start up again.

Will Modi or Xi be able to dissuade Putin once again?

This is the terrifying new reality that we face and shows how unstable the Putin regime is.

We must continue our support of Ukraine to help damage the Russian military machine as much as possible. Every day we wait, Russia becomes stronger and bolder.

Look at Putin’s recent orbital nuclear weapon deployment as an example of an unhinged regime that is looking for any “ace card” to gain an advantage against the West.

It shows me that the Cold War never really ended. It merely cooled off for a while as Putin consolidated power.

Unfortunately, the Cold War is starting to heat up again.

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