Putin’s threats worry Ukraine’s Nato allies as sign of desperation

Ukraine’s allies are increasingly concerned that desperation in the Kremlin over an unrelenting string of battlefield failures may lead Russia to escalate its war, possibly using a massive attack on a target like a dam or even a weapon of mass destruction.

For the moment, there’s no sign Moscow is actually making preparations for such a strike, even as it ratchets up the rhetoric, according to officials from North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. US and European defense ministers rejected allegations from Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu in a rare round robin of phone calls Sunday alleging Kyiv is preparing to use a “dirty bomb.”

Instead, the view among Ukraine’s allies is that the Kremlin is trying to scare them with the talk of such “unthinkable” weapons — along with strikes on the country’s civilian power grid — into reducing their supplies of weapons and other support for Kyiv. So far, the intimidation campaign hasn’t worked.

As Vladimir Putin’s war enters its ninth month with his troops steadily losing ground — land the Russian president last month claimed to annex as Russian territory and vowed to defend with all available means — the Kremlin has few options for turning things around quickly. The 300,000 reservists Putin called up will need weeks or months to train and inventories of the missiles Russia has lately been using to target Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure are running short, western officials said.

“It is Russia trying to dissuade the West from further helping Ukraine but it really is a sign of desperation,” said Samantha de Bendern, an associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, pointing to Russia’s losses on the battle field along with its dwindling supply of weapons.

“They can’t produce weapons fast enough to keep up with what the west is giving Ukraine, so this is a message to the West: stop messing in Ukraine otherwise things will get really bad.”

The UK, US and France have dismissed Shoigu’s claims that Kyiv plans to use a “dirty bomb,”  which could combine conventional explosives and radioactive material on its own territory, as “a pretext for escalation” and vowed a harsh response.

Privately, Kyiv’s allies are wargaming how they might react, though officials have been tight-lipped about the possibilities they’re considering for fear of appearing to lock themselves into particular actions. They are also planning on how to keep up weapons supplies, humanitarian relief and gathering evidence of war crimes in the event of a massive attack.

While Russia’s public threats it might use tactical nuclear weapons have raised fears, officials from Nato states said they haven’t seen any of the telltale preparations that would normally precede that. Western officials said after the Shoigu calls they still believed the likelihood of any use of nuclear weapons was limited. Russia has regularly made unfounded allegations about Ukraine’s alleged plans for escalation.

The Kremlin still has a range of options for escalation short of nuclear arms that it’s likely to turn to first, one of the people said. Among those may be an attack on the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, which would cause massive flooding downstream and potentially threaten cooling-water supplies for Ukraine’s nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia.

—Bloomberg