The stakes are high for Putin, as Russia’s military is in retreat and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to retake areas occupied by Russia eight years ago, including Crimea and what are now the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia leased its only warm-water naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea, from Ukraine. Now with Ukrainian advances, Russia’s kilo-class submarines are fleeing the port. It dates to the Soviet era, so its crumbling utility is an unprecedented blow to Russian prestige.
Shortly after Putin’s speech, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russia is “at war not only with Ukraine and the Ukrainian army, but with the collective West.”
The adviser, Sergei Markov, claimed in a BBC interview that Russia was “liberating Ukraine from your British-American occupation.” He said Moscow would sooner use strategic nuclear weapons against the West than tactical nukes against “our brothers,” the Ukrainians.
“Ukraine is occupied by Western countries who make a proxy army from Ukrainians and it’s Western countries fighting against the Russian army using Ukrainian soldiers as their slaves,” he said.
Russia is increasing war production and mobilizing 300,000 reservists for drafting into its “partial mobilization” in Ukraine. The draft will likely cost Putin dearly in terms of Russian public opinion.
The latest nuclear threat is in addition to Russia’s shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which could cause a meltdown that would blanket Ukraine and many parts of Europe with radiation.
Putin risks this nuclear destruction based on the lie that Russia owns Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine has long cherished its independence, with its own representation at the United Nations since the international organization’s inception in 1945.
Invasions of Ukraine by authoritarians, including the Soviets and Nazis, have always been illegitimate, first and foremost, because they lacked the support of Ukrainians. True sovereignty only arises from the consent and ongoing support of the governed, which Putin lacks as an unelected dictator. His “election”—without even the basics of freedom of speech—is anything but democracy.
Putin’s nuclear threats require forceful action to remove him from power. The responsibility for this falls upon the Russian people. It also falls upon other countries that might facilitate his removal and thus decrease the risk of a debilitating nuclear war in Europe and the United States that would leave a power vacuum into which China would step.
We are at a turning point in world history. Will democracies cave to nuclear threats from dictators like Putin and Xi, who have every reason to follow their territorial grabs in Crimea and the South China Sea with more demands and conquests? Or will we use their current military weaknesses to roll them back, roll them up, and finally put them in prison where they belong?
The world is watching our response to Putin. Beijing is watching. If we show fear and surrender Ukraine, the CCP will take that as a green light to launch similar attacks on Taiwan. Such aggression will not end until the United States, its allies, and NATO take risks and pay the costs to remove these existential threats at their source.
This means providing Ukraine and Taiwan with more weapons they need to win, including better jet fighters and more powerful long-range missiles. It requires American boots on the ground in both countries and tougher sanctions on Russia, including naval interdictions of its oil tankers at sea, which, like so many pirate ships, now ply the waves with impunity to mainland China.
We must make clear to Putin—and his cronies around the world—that might does not make right. Bullies and thieves are losers because we make this our overarching mission.
The world’s future will not be inherited by those willing to make nuclear threats against other countries for territorial conquest that includes atrocities of torture, rape, and murder against locals. The world will instead be inherited by the countries that stand firm for their values and ensure the freedom and liberty of their people.
