They reveal that the United States was preparing for an imminent Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine

For a few weeks in October 2022, the White House was gripped by a crisis whose depth was not publicly acknowledged at the time. It was a glimpse of what felt like a terrifying new era.

President Joe Biden stood in an Upper East Side home owned by businessman James Murdoch, the rebellious scion of the media empire, surrounded by liberal New York Democrats who had paid handsomely to listen to upbeat conversations about government’s agenda for the coming years.

It was October 6, 2022, but what they heard that night was a disturbing message that, although Biden didn’t say it, came directly from intercepted highly confidential communications which he had recently been informed of, suggesting that autocrat Vladimir Putin’s threats to use the nuclear weapon against Ukraine had become an operational plan.

“It’s the first time since then “the Cuban Missile Crisis”the president said, as they gathered amidst Murdoch’s art collection. “We have a direct threat of the use of a nuclear weapon if indeed things continue on the path they are on.”

The gravity of his tone began to sink in: The president was talking about the prospect of the first wartime use of a nuclear weapon since then. Hiroshima and NagasakHey. Not sometime in the future. She was referring to the next few weeks.

From the interceptions it emerged that, for the first time since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, frequent conversations took place within the Russian army on access to the nuclear arsenal. Some were simply “various forms of speech,” one official said. But others involved units responsible for moving or deploying weapons.

Detonate the bomb on the battlefield

The most alarming of the intercepts revealed that he was one of the highest-ranking Russian military commanders he was explicitly discussing the logistics of detonating a weapon on the battlefield.

Although there was no data that Russia had moved these weapons, the CIA warned that the advancing Ukrainian forces could perfectly well reach Crimea, a red line to Moscow and the likelihood of nuclear use increases exponentially.

No one knew how to evaluate the accuracy of that estimate: the factors that influenced the decision to use nuclear weapons, or even to threaten their use, were too abstract, too dependent on human emotions and accidents. But it wasn’t the kind of warning an American president could ignore.

“It’s the nuclear paradox” Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told this reporter at a dinner last summer at his official headquarters on the Potomac River, recalling warnings he had issued in the Situation Room. “The more successful the Ukrainians are in reversing the Russian invasion, the more likely Putin will go ahead with using the bomb,” he said.

This account of what happened in those days in October (just before the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest moment to the clash between the United States and the Soviet Union) nuclear exchange in the Cold War) has been reconstructed in interviews over the past 18 months with administration officials, diplomats, leaders of NATO nations and military officers who have recounted the depth of the crisis in those weeks with the terrifying idea of ​​the return of nuclear weapons. Attention.

There were concerns in the White House and the Pentagon much deeper than recognized. Great efforts have been made to prepare for this possibility. That night Biden mused aloud: “I don’t think there’s the ability to easily use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

They reflected the urgent preparations underway for a United States reaction at the height of that war demonstration.

Biden was convinced of it Putin was able to pull the trigger. “He’s someone I know quite well. He’s not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because you could say his military is significantly underperforming,” he reflected.

Since then, battlefield advantage has changed dramatically, with October 2022 now looking like the high point of Ukraine’s military performance in the past two years. However, Putin has now launched a new set of nuclear threatsduring the annual in Moscow at the end of February.

He said that any NATO country that helps Ukraine attack Russian territory with cruise missiles, or that might consider sending its own troops into battle, “must, ultimately, understand that it threatens to trigger a conflict with nuclear weapons and, therefore, the destruction of civilization.” “We have weapons that can attack targets on their territory,” Putin said in relation to Western capitals. “Don’t you understand?”

Putin was referring to medium-range or intercontinental missiles. But the scare in 2022 involved so-called tactical nuclear weapons small enough to be loaded into an artillery shell and designed to gut a military unit or a few city blocks.

At least initially, its use would not resemble a full nuclear exchange at all, the great fear of the Cold War. The effects would be terrible, but they would be limited to a relatively small geographic area: perhaps detonated over the Black Sea or dropped on a Ukrainian military base.

Evaluate the US response

The White House’s concern was so deep that it organized high-level working groups calibrate the response. Administration officials have said the U.S. countermeasure should be nonnuclear. But they quickly added that there would have to be a dramatic response, perhaps even a conventional strike against the units that had launched the nuclear weapons.

Otherwise they risk emboldening not only Putin but any other authoritarian with a large or small nuclear arsenal.

However, no one knew what kind of nuclear demonstration did Putin have in mind. Some believed that Russia’s public warnings that Ukraine was preparing to use a giant “dirty bomb,” a weapon carrying radiological waste, were a pretext for a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

War games at the Pentagon and think tanks across Washington imagined that Putin’s use of such a weapon could occur under a variety of circumstances. One simulation predicted a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive that would jeopardize Putin’s control over Crimea. Another involved Moscow’s demand that the West end all military support for the Ukrainians: no more tanks, no more missiles, no more ammunition. The goal would be to divide NATO.

To prevent nuclear use, in the days before Biden’s fund-raising appearance, Foreign Secretary Antony Blinken called his Russian counterpart, as well as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz was due to make a scheduled visit to Beijing; he was ready to inform Xi Jinping about serious intelligence developments and urge him to do so they warn that there is no place for the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukrainian conflict. Xi made this statement publicly, it is not clear whether he made any private negotiations with Moscow.

Meanwhile Biden sent a message to Putin telling him that they had to organize a rurgent meeting of the emissaries. The Russian leader sent Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR, the foreign intelligence service that had carried out the Solar Winds attack, an ingenious cyberattack that affected a wide swath of American government offices and companies. Biden chose William Burns, head of the CIA and former ambassador to Russia.

Burns told this reporter that the two men met in mid-November 2022. But while Burns arrived to warn what would happen to Russia if it used a nuclear weapon, Naryshkin apparently thought the CIA director had been sent to negotiate an armistice agreement this would end the war. He told Burns that any such negotiations should begin with the understanding that Russia will retain any territory currently under its control.

It took some time for Burns to dissuade Naryshkin from the idea that the United States was willing to give up Ukrainian territory in exchange for peace. Finally, they addressed the crux of the matter: what Washington and its allies would be willing to do if Putin followed through on his nuclear threats.

“I made it clear,” Burns later recalled, “that there would be clear consequences for Russia.” “Naryshkin swore that he understood and that Putin had no intention of using a nuclear weapon,” Burns said. The mistrust remained.