As winter sets in, Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly preparing a major offensive in Ukraine that could potentially include two of NATO’s newest members, Finland and Sweden. This news comes as Putin escalates the Ukraine war by raising his nuclear combat readiness and bolstering his troops by 350,000, raising fears of a global conflict. The Russian President has also warned the Kremlin will invest whatever necessary to increase its nuclear arsenal and vowed his much-hyped Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles will be available to his forces within weeks. These missiles are capable of intercontinental travel and can be tipped with nuclear warheads, and no missile defenses in American or Western arsenals can stop them.
The UK’s Daily Mail reported that Putin made a series of rare and frank concessions about his botched invasion, admitting there were ‘problems’ with his mobilization and acknowledging vague ‘criticism’ of his military strategy. However, to reverse his fortunes, the president will spend ‘whatever it takes’ on the military, ‘improve the combat readiness of our nuclear triad’ and increase his troop numbers from 1.15 million to 1.5 million.
Long-serving Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu indicated that the Russian high command is preparing for the next phase of the 10-month-old war in Ukraine, stating that the additional manpower would be utilized to form new military units in western Russia, opposite NATO and Ukraine.
The escalation of the war, combined with the threat of using nuclear weapons, is likely to send pause through the ranks of Western civilian and military leaders. The specter of a nuclear conflict has now been raised dramatically, given that the Zircon missiles are capable of intercontinental travel and can be tipped with nuclear warheads. This news comes after weeks of decent gains by Ukrainian forces and a visit to the United States by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to plead for more weapons.
The fact is, if Putin uses a nuke in Europe, that’s going to drag NATO into the war, and once again, conflict on the continent will rage, giving Communist China the opportunity it needs to move on Taiwan and, possibly, Japan. It might just be time for the world to consider letting Ukraine go in order to prevent a larger global conflict.
