theatlantic | This Russian propaganda has been amplified and endorsed by an unusual assortment of people in the United States, including the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs. The propaganda absolves Russia, blames the United States for the war, and has four main tenets: first, that a long-standing American effort to bring Ukraine into NATO poses a grave threat to Russian security. Second, that American shipments of weapons to Ukraine have prolonged the fighting and caused needless suffering among civilians. Third, that American support for Ukraine is just a pretext for seeking the destruction of Russia. And, finally, that American policies could soon prove responsible for causing an all-out nuclear war.
Those arguments are based on lies. They are being spread to justify Russia’s unprecedented use of nuclear blackmail to seize territory from a neighboring state. Concerns about a possible nuclear exchange have thus far deterred the United States and NATO from providing Ukraine with the tanks, aircraft, and long-range missiles that might change the course of the war. If nuclear threats or the actual use of nuclear weapons leads to the defeat of Ukraine, Russia may use them to coerce other states. Tactics once considered immoral and unthinkable might become commonplace. Nuclear weapons would no longer be regarded solely as a deterrent of last resort; the nine countries that possess them would gain even greater influence; countries that lack them would seek to obtain them; and the global risk of devastating wars would increase exponentially.
That is why the greatest nuclear threat we face is a Russian victory in Ukraine.
Russia has about 6,000 nuclear weapons, more than any other country, and for years Putin has portrayed them as a source of national pride. His warnings about their possible use during the war in Ukraine have been coy and often contradictory. “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened,” Putin said in September, “we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people—this is not a bluff.” His vow to rely on nuclear weapons only as a defensive measure conveys an underlying threat: An attempt to regain Ukrainian land annexed by Russia and deemed by Putin to be part of “our country” might prompt a nuclear response. He also asserted that the United States and NATO are the ones engaging in “nuclear blackmail,” and that “those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.” In October, he claimed that Ukraine was planning to launch a nuclear strike on itself—by detonating a warhead filled with radioactive waste—as part of a false-flag operation to make Russia seem responsible. In December, Putin said that the risk of a nuclear war was increasing but suggested once again that the real danger did not come from Russia. “We have not gone crazy,” he said. “We are aware what nuclear weapons are … We are not going to brandish these weapons like a razor, running around the world.”
Although Putin’s comments have been subtle and open to multiple interpretations, the propaganda outlets that he controls have been neither. For almost a year, they have continually threatened and celebrated the possibility of nuclear war. This division of labor allows Putin to appear statesmanlike while his underlings stoke fear and normalize the idea of using nuclear weapons to commit the mass murder of civilians. Julia Davis, a columnist for The Daily Beast, and Francis Scarr, a BBC correspondent, have performed an immense public service: supplying translations of the vicious, apocalyptic, often unhinged rants that have become the norm on Russian television. “Either we lose in Ukraine, or the Third World War starts,” Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of Russia Today and a close ally of Putin’s, said in April. “I think World War III is more realistic, knowing us, knowing our leader … That all this will end with a nuclear strike seems more probable to me.” At various times, Simonyan has discussed nuclear attacks on Ukraine, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, arguing that death would be better than succumbing to “the monstrous organism known as the collective Western world.”
Vladimir Solovyov, another popular broadcaster who is close to Putin, routinely expresses a preference for nuclear annihilation over a Russian defeat. The invitation of Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, to the White House and the U.S. Capitol in December made Solovyov especially angry. “We’ll either win, or humanity will cease to exist, because the Lord won’t stand for the triumph of warriors of the Antichrist,” he said, repeating the new propaganda line that Ukrainians aren’t just Nazis; they’re satanists. “We are Russians. God is with us,” he concluded. Despite his professed hatred for ungodly Western decadence, before the invasion of Ukraine Solovyov owned villas overlooking Lake Como, in Italy.
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