Europe must stand together against Putin

The danger that Putin will use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict has increased. In a speech on September 21 in which he calls up 300,000 reserve soldiers for service in Ukraine, he threatens nuclear attack. Russian military doctrine states that such weapons can be used if an overwhelming attack on Russian territory takes place.

A key word here is Russian territory. One of Putin's goals in this conflict is the Russian takeover of the important coal mining and industrial region of Donbas, which consists of Donetsk and Luhansk counties in Ukraine. The successful Ukrainian offensive here in recent weeks threatens Putin's plans. As a counter move, Putin now holds referendums in the region that the Russians partially control. Citizens are asked if they wish to become Russians. There are 3.5 million Russian speakers living in Donbas. They make up a third of the population and are the result of migration of Russians seeking industrial jobs here when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. "The Soviet Union developed the Donbas into an industrial area that set the pace of Soviet industrialization," says Markian Dobczansky at Harvard University. The outcome of the referendums is given in advance. Putin will declare Donbas Russian territory and will be able to threaten with tactical nuclear weapons if he loses further ground here. Several experts believe that a victory in Donbas could serve as a substitute for the loss of Kiev.

Different scenarios for peace are now being discussed. President Volodymyr Zelensky's goal is to regain all Russian-occupied territory, including the Crimean Peninsula. Some European commentators believe that the war can be ended by the parties withdrawing to the borders of February 24, and thus leaving parts of Donbas and all of Crimea to Putin. 

The situation is reminiscent of the negotiations between British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler in Munich in September 1938. Hitler, who came to power in 1933, set himself the goal of incorporating all European German speakers into the Greater German Reich ( Grossdeutschland ) and giving the Germans Lebensraum after the Treaty of Versailles which dictated the Germans' freedom of action after the First World War. After taking over Austria in 1938, in what was named Anschluss, Hitler wanted to incorporate Sudetenland in Western Czechoslovakia into the Greater German Reich. Most of the inhabitants here were German-speaking. Chamberlain believed that Hitler would be satisfied if he could have Sudetenland and that we would have "peace in our time." On October 10, the Germans occupied Sudetenland. But on March 15, 1939, Hitler established a protectorate in the rest of Czechoslovakia which he called Bohemia and Moravia. On September 1, the German army entered Poland. The Second World War was underway.

Many believe that Putin's dream is the restoration of the Russian Empire as it was before the revolution in 1917. The European part consisted, in addition to Russia, of the three Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Finland, Poland, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, to name a few countries. But the main piece in Putin's geographical puzzle is Ukraine.

Putin will not stop if he gets Crimea and Donbas. The Russian Empire was bigger than that. Besides, the price he has already paid for his warfare is far too high to get so little back.

Hitler was not stopped until he suffered total defeat. I don't think Putin will be either, until he suffers the same fate. The danger of such thinking is that the more Putin is pushed into a corner, the more desperate he becomes, and the greater the danger of desperate actions. Tactical nukes are small nuclear weapons that can destroy a city or a small area. The size and strength of modern tactical nuclear weapons vary, but they are still much more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nakasaki.

Most experts believe that it is unlikely that Putin will press the nuclear button. The consequences are too great. The areas the bombs would explode in would be uninhabitable for humans, both Russian and otherwise, for decades if not forever. Moreover, the West will have to retaliate in one way or another.  Besides, Putin alone cannot launch a nuclear attack.

Another way to carry out nuclear terror would be to bomb one or more nuclear power plants in Ukraine, or to cut the power to the reactors, so that they cannot be cool down. We might then have a Chernobyl-type accident.

The only solution is for Putin to lose or be removed. The mobilization he has started is not popular in Russia. In the days since Putin's speech, thousands of Russians have demonstrated in the streets. The newspaper New York Post writes that thousands of young Russian men, who risk being mobilized, are now Googling information on how to break their own arm.

The threat level in Europe is now at its highest since the Berlin crisis in 1961. But as Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said at the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York: "Helping Ukraine is not only the right choice. It is the only choice.”