The president and supreme commander in chief of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has ordered a military exercise to be carried out “shortly” involving its non-strategic nuclear forces, the second line of its arsenal by power level and capable of delivering a first strike in a hypothetical conflict with the West. The Kremlin argues this as a response to proposals by Western leaders to deploy troops in Ukraine. “The exercise aims to maintain the readiness of units that use non-strategic nuclear weapons to unconditionally guarantee the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Russian State in the face of threats from Western senior officials,” the Russian Ministry of Defense stated this Monday. through a statement. The announcement, a warning sign, also comes after French President Emmanuel Macron raised the use of France’s nuclear force as a deterrence tool to protect its European partners.
The Kremlin has made the new threat in a symbolic week. Putin will be inaugurated this Tuesday for a new presidential term, and Russia will celebrate a sacred date for the country on Thursday: Victory Day, the anniversary of the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, has specified that Putin’s order responds “to the statements of [el presidente francés] Emmanuel Macron, British Foreign Secretary [David Cameron] and American officials.” “They talked about his willingness, and even his intention, to send armed contingents to Ukraine, that is, to expose NATO soldiers to the Russian army. “This is a completely new escalation of tension that is unprecedented and requires special attention and measures,” declared the representative of the Russian head of state.
The missile formations of the Russian Southern Military District will coordinate with aviation and the navy to “practice the preparation and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons,” the Ministry of Defense has emphasized. Although the Kremlin’s official military doctrine plans to use its 6,000 nuclear warheads only “when the very existence of the State is in danger,” the high command also considers the option of launching a tactical and less powerful nuclear bomb to achieve its objectives by instilling fear in the rival. . This strategy, contemplated since Putin came to power in the early 2000s in the face of American technological superiority, has been called “escalation for de-escalation.”
The French president brought up a taboo topic for NATO last February: deploying troops inside Ukraine. Although the Elysée later clarified that they would only be military advisors for the Ukrainian army, Macron again insisted on May 2 on sending Western soldiers “if the Russian forces cross the front and there is a Ukrainian request, which is not the case.” the case today.”
For his part, the British Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, declared last week in an interview with Sky News that reinforcing Ukrainian forces with soldiers from the Atlantic Alliance would mean “a dangerous escalation.” However, Cameron crossed another alleged Kremlin red line by telling the Reuters agency that kyiv “has the right” to use the long-range weapons supplied by London against enemy military targets located within Russian territory.
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The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the United Kingdom ambassador, Nigel Casey, this Monday to convey to London that the response to a bombardment with missiles of British origin on Russian territory “could be an attack against any British military installation or equipment in Ukraine and beyond its borders.”
kyiv hits Russian gasoline exports
Beyond the nuclear threat, Ukraine awaits the arrival of new munitions promised by the United States and the United Kingdom, but continues to fight the war for existence with its own means. These practices have been mainly reflected in an unprecedented Ukrainian drone offensive against Russian refineries. As a consequence, Russian exports by ship of petroleum products plummeted in April by more than 20% compared to the same month in 2023, and more than 11% compared to March, according to data from a private consulting firm. The new Ukrainian strategy has taken its toll on Moscow, whose foreign sales of fuel oil and gasoline fell to the lowest level since the consulting firm Kpler began monitoring its market in 2017.
“The repair season and the lack of capacity after the Ukrainian attacks with unmanned devices caused the weakest month in Russian exports of oil products,” the company notes in a report to which the Russian media has had access. R.B.K..
kyiv began a bombing campaign against the Russian oil industry in March to hit one of the Kremlin’s main sources of income. The objective of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is to thus increase the difficulties that Russia suffers in maintaining its refineries due to the shortage of spare parts caused by sanctions. According to estimates by the Russian statistics agency Rosstat, the production of petroleum products had fallen by more than 10% since the attacks began until mid-April.
Ukrainian attacks have hit refineries located deep in Russia’s European zone. Only in March were facilities in regions as distant as Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Oryol, Ryazan, Rostov and Leningrad, some of them bordering Finland and others with the Caucasus, hit.
“The situation is not critical because the oil can be diverted to other refineries that operate at 75% or 80% of their capacity,” Stanislav Mitrakhovich, an expert at the Russian National Energy Security Fund, told this newspaper by telephone, although he highlights that this This measure will cause a headache for Russian railway transport and the attacks may have an impact on the increase in the price of products within the country.
The Kremlin has banned the export of gasoline between March 1 and August 1 to avoid a price spike in the domestic market. “The disadvantage is that companies and the Government make a lot of money from the export of gasoline,” says Mitrakhovich, who does not rule out the risks of a rise in fuel prices “in the summer, when there will be an increase in demand for gasoline.” , although so far it has not had a terrible impact.”
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