DISINFO: West to benefit from Russian nuclear strikes on Ukraine
SUMMARY
The West will benefit from tactical Russian nuclear strikes on Ukraine because it will cut Russia’s ties to its allies and partners from the Global South in Latin America and Asia. This is what the West wants. But it is bad for Russia, and the Kremlin understands it. The West is provoking Russia and will undoubtedly keep doing so in the coming months.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring disinformation narrative from pro-Kremlin outlets accusing Ukraine’s partners in the EU, the US and other G7 nations of warmongering in general and issuing nuclear threats in particular. This claim was made in the context of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russia is using such messages to deflect attention away from its own nuclear threats, alleging that Ukraine and its partners are pushing the war into a nuclear catastrophe. Ukraine and its partners in the EU and the US have been consistently calling for a peaceful resolution to the war. Several international meetings have been held in order to achieve a just peace on the basis of the United Nations Charter and respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity (see here and here). Russia has been routinely rejecting such proposals and issuing nuclear threats instead virtually since the very beginning of its unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine, launched on 24 February 2024. The Kremlin has also resorted to nuclear blackmail against Ukraine and the West at the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
For at least 10 years now, the Russian info-sphere has seen nuclear threats being made against the West by public figures like TV hosts Dmitry Kiselyov and Vladimir Solovyov, the late nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky or ex-president Dmitri Medvedev. Even Putin said in a televised address “this is not a bluff” about possible use of nuclear arms.
Western leaders, organisations and think-tanks realise that nuclear warfare is a lose-lose situation. Even such close partners of Russia’s as China and India have warned Putin against a nuclear attack in Ukraine.
Read similar disinformation cases claiming that NATO is moving towards the end of its existence in the conflict with Russia, that The US and Ukraine are moving the world closer to nuclear war, and that Ukraine is preparing a provocation with a dirty nuclear bomb.