The Biden administration was concerned that Russia could use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine in late 2022, so the U.S. began “rigorous preparations” for such a scenario, which cannot be ruled out as a possibility, two senior officials told CNN. officials of the American administration, reports News.ro.

It was not a single indicator that led the Joe Biden administration to such an unexpected assessment, but a series of events, analyzes and, importantly, highly confidential new information. The U.S. administration’s fears, a senior administration official said, “were not just hypothetical — they were based on certain information that we had gathered.”

Contingency plans began to take shape at an unprecedented level after senior members of the Biden administration became increasingly alarmed by the situation.

“We had to plan so that we would be in the best position if this event, which is already not inconceivable, happened,” the same senior US administration official said.

If such a strike were to occur in Ukraine, it would be the first nuclear strike since the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly 80 years ago.

“This is what the conflict showed us, so we believed and believe that we have the right to carefully prepare and do everything possible to prevent this from happening,” said another high-ranking US official in an interview with the CNN administration. “I don’t think many of us, when we started our business, expected to spend a lot of time preparing for a scenario that a few years ago was considered to belong to a bygone era,” the official added.

During this period, from late summer to the fall of 2022, the National Security Council convened a series of meetings to develop contingency plans “in case there is a very clear indication that they are going to do something, to attack with nuclear weapons, whether or not would they have just done — how would we respond, how would we try to prevent or contain it,” one source told CNN.

When the attack was being prepared

The end of the summer of 2022 turned out to be devastating for Russian troops in Ukraine. In the south, Ukrainian troops advanced towards Kherson, occupied by the Russians. The city was Russia’s biggest booty after the invasion. Now it was in danger of being lost to the Ukrainian counteroffensive. It is important that as the Ukrainian troops advanced, entire Russian units were under threat of encirclement. The administration believed that such a catastrophic loss could become a “potential trigger” for the use of nuclear weapons.

“In Kherson at that time there were more and more signs that the Russian lines might collapse. Tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were potentially vulnerable,” explained one of the sources.

Russia was losing ground on Ukrainian sovereign territory, not within Russia. But American officials were concerned that Russian President Vladimir Putin saw things differently. He told the Russian people that Kherson was now part of Russia itself, and therefore could perceive a devastating loss there as a direct threat to himself and the Russian state.

“Our assessment for some time was that one of the scenarios in which the use of nuclear weapons would be considered (included) things like existential threats to the Russian state, direct threats to Russian territory,” a senior administration official said. .

According to this assessment, Russia may consider a tactical nuclear attack as a deterrent against further losses of Russian-held territory in Ukraine, as well as against any potential attack on Russia itself, the source explained.

Operation under the false flag of Russia

At the same time, the Russian propaganda machine spread a new fake story about a Ukrainian dirty bomb that American officials feared could be intended to cover a Russian nuclear attack.

In October 2022, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made a series of calls to representatives of the defense departments of the United States, Britain, France, and Turkey, informing them that the Kremlin was “concerned about possible provocations by Kyiv using dirty bombs.”

American and other Western officials dismissed Russian warnings. However, the Russian ambassador to the UN sent a letter directly to the UN detailing the same alleged threat. Russian officials claimed that Ukraine would build and detonate a dirty bomb against Russian forces and then blame Russia for the attack.

What food for thought

American officials dismissed the Russian warnings but were wary of the motivation behind them. “Russian public reports appeared unexpectedly about the possibility of Ukraine’s use of a dirty bomb, which, as we have seen, has no basis,” said a high-ranking official of the administration. What was “more concerning” to this official was that the Russians themselves were saying these things “either as an excuse to do something crazy or as a cover for something they themselves wanted to do.” Therefore, it was quite worrying,” the official commented.

But there was another game that took this excitement to a new level. Western special services have received information that a nuclear attack is being openly discussed between Russian officials. There were “indications that we were capturing in other ways that this was at least something that was being discussed at lower levels of the Russian system,” a senior US administration official said.

US access to Russia’s internal communications has proven capable before. On the eve of the invasion of Ukraine, the US intercepted the Russian military command discussing preparations for the invasion, a message that was part of what was later verified to be an accurate US intelligence assessment that an invasion was imminent.

“This is never an unequivocal, black-and-white assessment,” the official emphasized. “But the level of risk seemed to be higher than before,” he added.

What the US knew and did not know

At no time has the US discovered that Russia is taking steps to mobilize its nuclear forces to carry out such an attack. “Obviously, we have placed a high priority on monitoring and have had some ability to at least track such movements of his nuclear forces,” a senior administration official said. “And at no time have we seen any indication of what steps we expect them to take if they go down the path of using nuclear weapons,” he added.

However, US officials were not sure they would know if Russia was moving tactical nuclear weapons to the site.

Unlike strategic nuclear weapons, which are capable of destroying entire cities, tactical or combat nuclear weapons are small enough to be moved inconspicuously and can be launched from conventional systems already deployed on the Ukrainian battlefield.

“If they were going to use tactical nuclear weapons, especially very low-yield tactical nuclear weapons, and if they were going to use just one or a few, it wasn’t 100 percent clear to us that we would necessarily know.” , said this high-ranking official of the administration.

Phones start ringing in Moscow

Several high-ranking officials of the administration took part in the emergency briefing.

According to senior administration officials, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “very directly” about US concerns.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley called his Russian colleague General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.

President Joe Biden has sent CIA Director Bill Burns to Turkey to speak with Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, to convey US concerns about a nuclear attack and gauge Russia’s intentions, a senior US official said.

The US has also worked closely with its allies both to develop action plans in the event of a Russian nuclear attack and to provide warnings to the Russian side about the consequences of such an attack.

“We’ve had a series of low-key conversations with key allies to review our thinking,” a source told CNN. “That’s the hallmark of our whole approach — that we’re better and stronger at it when we’re fully engaged with our allies,” the official said.

India and China, two important pawns

In addition, the US sought to enlist the help of non-allied nations, including China and India, to deter Russia from such an attack.

“One of the things we’ve been doing is not just sending them direct messages, but strongly urging them, pressuring them, encouraging other countries to be more careful, to do the same,” explained the second official. US administration. .

US officials say rapprochement and public statements by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi helped avert the crisis.

“We think that showing the international community concern about this, especially the concern of key countries about Russia and the Global South, was also a useful, persuasive factor and showed them what the cost of all this could be,” he said. other senior officials of the administration.

What lies ahead

Ahead of the nuclear scare at the end of 2022, CNN’s Jim Schutto, a CNN columnist and author of a book on major powers, asked American and European officials whether they had detected similar threats.

The danger lessened when the war in the east entered a period of relative stalemate. However, the US and its allies remain vigilant.

“At the time, we were less concerned about the imminent prospect, but it’s not something we’re thinking far ahead of,” a senior US official told him. “We continue to refine plans and it is possible that we will again face at least an increased risk in the coming months,” the official warned.

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