The United States is warning allies that Russia could put a nuclear weapon into orbit this year

BERLIN – US intelligence has told its closest European allies that if Russia intends to put a nuclear weapon into orbit, it will probably do so I’ll do it this year, but it could instead put a harmless “dummy” warhead into orbit to leave the West in doubt about its capabilities.

The assessment came as US intelligence services conducted a series of hasty, classified briefings to its Asian allies and NATO, as details of the US assessment of Russia’s intentions began to leak out.

American intelligence agencies are very divided about the president’s plans Vladimir Putinand Putin on Tuesday rejected accusations that he wanted to put a nuclear weapon into orbit, and his defense minister said the intelligence warning was fabricated in an attempt to convince Congress to authorize further aid for Ukraine.

During a meeting with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Putin said Russia had always been “categorically against” launching nuclear weapons into space and respected the rules Treatise on Outer Space of 1967, which prohibits the militarization of space, including the placement of nuclear weapons in orbit.

“We not only demand that the existing agreements we have in this area be respected,” he told Russian state media, “but we have repeatedly proposed strengthen these joint efforts“.

On Wednesday, Putin reinforced the central role he believes Russia’s nuclear arsenal plays in the country’s defense.

During his visit to an aviation factory, he climbed into the bomb bay of a Tu-160M ​​strategic bomber, the most modern in the Russian fleet.

Putin has made no secret of his interest in modernizing Russia’s Cold War-era delivery systems, such as the bomber, which can reach the United States and is designed to carry two dozen nuclear weapons.

And he announced a fleet of new weapons – some still in development – ​​including the Poseidon unmanned nuclear torpedo, designed to cross the Pacific, without human control, to explode off the west coast of the United States. (Russia has been less transparent about the accidents which accompanied the tests of these new weapons).

Differences

But a space weapon would be different.

Unlike the rest of the Russian or American arsenals, it would not be designed to hit cities or military sites, or any part of the Earth.

Instead, it would be nestled inside a satellite, capable of destroying swarms of commercial and military satellites orbiting alongside it in low-Earth orbit, including those, like Starlink, that are restructuring global communications capabilities.

It was Ukraine’s ability to connect its government, military and leaders via Starlink that played a critical role in the country’s survival in the first months after the Russian invasion two years ago.

According to two senior officials briefed on the assessment of intelligence that the United States has provided to allies, American officials said that Putin may believe that the mere threat of a huge disruption – even if that meant blowing up Russia’s satellites – it could infuse its nuclear arsenal with a new kind of deterrence.

Bloomberg previously reported that allies had been told the launch could happen this year.

If the Tu-160 bomber Putin boarded on Wednesday dropped its bombs on the United States or a NATO country, retaliation would not be long in coming. But Putin, American analysts told their counterparts, may believe that the old Cold War doctrine of “mutually assured destruction“would not apply in space:

No one would risk a war by exploding satellites, especially if there were no human casualties.

But U.S. officials admit they have little confidence in their own analysis of whether Putin is truly ready to launch a nuclear weapon into orbit.

They concluded that Russia tested such a system in early 2022, around the time Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

But it took some time for US intelligence agencies to establish that the test was a test to put a nuclear weapon into orbit.

Now these agencies are divided in their assessment of what might come next.

Scenarios

Some believe Putin could launch a “fictitious” weapon, but they do not clarify whether it was fake or real, making the answer even more difficult.

But the concern in Washington is so great that the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken last weekend he warned his Chinese and Indian counterparts that if a nuclear weapon were ever detonated in low Earth orbit, it would destroy their satellites as well.

Blinken urged them to use their influence with Putin to prevent the weapon from being deployed.

Shoigu, the defense chief, said Tuesday that Russia is not violating the 1967 treaty, but stopped short of discussing the plans.

“We have no nuclear weapons deployed in space, no nuclear weapon elements used on satellites, no fields created to prevent satellites from functioning effectively,” he said, according to Russian media.

“We don’t have any of this, and they know we don’t have it, but they keep making noise,” he continued in the meeting with Putin.

“The reason why the West makes all this noise is due to two things: first, to scare senators and deputies, to extort funding supposedly not only for Ukraine, but also for counter Russia and subdue it to a strategic defeat”.

“And secondly, in our opinion they would like to push us so clumsily to restart a dialogue on strategic stability,” he said, referring to talks that had been briefly underway before the invasion of Ukraine on creating a successor to the new treaty. which limits the overall number of weapons the United States and Russia can deploy.

The treaty expires in two years.

Those talks also delved into new types of weapons and new technologies, including artificial intelligence, that could pose new nuclear threats.

But the talks ended with the invasion of Ukraine and were never resumed.

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