James Traub, a columnist for Foreign Policy, criticizes nuclear blackmail as a strategy to avoid catastrophe in the essay "The Crazy Logic of Balancing of Brinksmanship is Back”. The diplomatic technique of "brinksmanship", although it has been used many times in history, got its name from US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who in 1955 threatened to drop atomic bombs on China. Since then, such actions have been widely condemned, and no one used this approach until Putin gave his speech last week, Traub writes. Dulles believed that the ability to escalate the situation to the limit is an art, but nuclear war is not a game, and states are not 100% rational when participating in a conflict. it is difficult to call Putin prudent at all, writes Traub, because he is ready to use nuclear weapons just to ensure the survival of his regime. Followers of realpolitik, such as political scientist John Mearsheimer, insist that the loss of Ukraine will satisfy Putin, and since his goal is not just a neutral Ukraine, but a destroyed and controlled Ukraine, such a price for peace is not acceptable, the author believes. The optimal outcome would be a victory for Ukraine, which Putin would not perceive as a catastrophe for himself. It turns out that Ukraineʼs allies may have no other choice but to continue "balancing over the abyss" ― in particular, to clearly outline the consequences that will befall Putin in the event of a nuclear attack. Traub cites the thinking of Matthew Kroenig, a nuclear weapons expert, who believes that these consequences should not include a nuclear strike, but instead focus on increased arms supplies to Ukraine and conventional attacks by Russian forces. Personal losses are another thing that can affect Putin. For example, if Xi Jinping warns about severing relations with China, or if the head of the Mossad warns that Putin himself will not survive a nuclear attack on Ukraine, it can be quite convincing.
The Guardian published a column by the British political analyst Anatole Lieven, who hints at the need for negotiations with Russia. Lieven believes that the holding of "referendums" in the occupied territories of Ukraine is perhaps a more dangerous sign than the announcement of mobilization. According to the author, an important signal will be whether the Russian Federation will annex these territories immediately after the "referendums", the results of which are determined in advance. If this happens, it will mean that Moscow is ready to fight indefinitely, and Ukraine will have to hope for an unstable ceasefire with breaks for active hostilities, the author writes. If the decision on joining the territories is postponed, this will mean a chance to resume negotiations. If the Kremlin does go for immediate annexation, dissatisfaction will grow in Russian society, and then Putinʼs regime will be under real threat. Then, the analyst believes, a person may come to power who will blame Putin personally for the failure and decide to expand the war beyond the borders of Ukraine and announce total mobilization. To avoid this, Lieven suggests that the West "accept Putinʼs hidden offer" of negotiations.
Politico writes about the new tools of disinformation that the Russian Federation uses in Europe. For example, the German publication Der Spiegel allegedly wrote about the shortage of natural gas, the British The Guardian about doubts about Russiaʼs war crimes in Ukraine, and the Italian news agency Ansa seemed to criticize the storage of grain in Kyiv. All this "news" is fake, says the Meta report, and is part of a Russian campaign in the EU and Britain. The report mentions more than 60 fake media sites that actively promoted themselves on social networks and spread Kremlin narratives about the war in Ukraine. This campaign, which lasted from April to September, is the largest attempt to promote the interests of the Russian Federation in social media since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine. Attackers copied the addresses of reputable media to post fake news there, and then promoted it with social media ads. At the beginning of the campaign, efforts were directed evenly across Europe, but over time the focus shifted to Germany, the article says. Fortunately, these posts received almost no interaction from real users, in part due to obvious errors in the translation of the text.