This is not a “red phone”, as in the movies, but the crisis communications between Washington and Moscow, opened during the Cold War, resumed against the background of Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, notes the France-Presse agency, which presents a brief history of this connection between the USA and Russia, Agerpres quotes.

This was confirmed by US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, answering on September 25 to an NBC journalist who asked him if “the red phone is working again”: “The answer to the question is yes.”

“We have the opportunity to speak directly to them (the Russians) at a high level to clearly tell them what our message is and to hear them,” he added.

“It’s happened a lot over the last few months, it’s happened even over the last few days,” said Jake Sullivan, who declined to specify the exact nature of the communications channels used to “protect” them or the frequency of those exchanges.

How the “red phone” appeared.

The term “red phone” eventually came to mean all high-level confidential contacts of an urgent nature between Washington and Moscow.

But it was originally a very specific device created in 1963 between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In October 1962, the Cuban missile crisis shook the whole world.

The lack of direct communication encourages speculation about the intentions of the opposing camp and therefore increases the risk of nuclear escalation. Then it takes several hours to transfer, translate and encrypt messages between Moscow and Washington.

So that later the two countries agree, down to the smallest details, on the creation of a fast and direct communication system, extremely secure.

“Memorandum of Understanding between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Establishment of Direct Communication” (“Memorandum of Understanding between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Establishment of Direct Communication” Communication Channel), the first bilateral treaty between two states, was signed in Geneva on June 20, 1963.

In the movie “Dr. Strangelove”, on this phone American President Merkin Muffley has a tragicomic conversation with “Dimitri” from Moscow about the imminent nuclear apocalypse.

In fact, the two capitals communicate with the help of written messages, coded and transmitted over a cable length of thousands of kilometers (Washington-London-Copenhagen-Stockholm-Helsinki-Moscow) and through a radio channel.

According to an article published in 2013 in Smithsonian magazine, the first message sent by Americans was: “A quick brown fox jumped over the back of a lazy dog ​​1234567890.”

The message doesn’t have much meaning, but it has the advantage of using every possible symbol to verify the material.

Shakespeare and Chekhov

The system was modernized in 1971, replaced by satellite connections and terminals installed in two countries – from the American side, the connection reaches the Pentagon, which, in turn, is connected to the crisis room of the White House, the so-called “Situation”. Room”.

In a 1988 article, the New York Times magazine compared the Pentagon room to “the computer room of a well-equipped high school” and described how the system is checked every hour, every day, with messages that have nothing to do with current affairs. : “Americans sometimes refer to Shakespeare, Russians to Chekhov.”

In 1994, a new system allowed defense officials of the two countries to be in almost constant contact.

The US has always kept the number of uses of this secure link a secret.

It was used in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and then in the 1973 war, according to the US State Department.

According to various press articles, the line was exacerbated during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and was widely used during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when exchanging messages regarding Lebanon and Poland.

According to the NBC channel or the Washington Post, former President Barack Obama used a “red phone” – actually an extremely secure email – on October 31, 2016 to strongly warn Vladimir Putin about any disruption of the US presidential election. .

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