from Russia Insider:

Concerning the latter issue experts immediately started a discussion about whether or not the president of Russia meant a nuclear preventive strike, and if yes, then how does it correlate with his statement about not being the first to strike a nuclear blow.

We will answer briefly.

Firstly, it does match, since a preventive strike is considered by international law as a response to aggression that became already inevitable. You, however, need to prove that the aggression was inevitable. But it is unlikely that someone will be interested in proof after nuclear war. The one who wins will be the one who survives, and not many will survive (if any survive at all). And it will be individuals and/or communities, and not states or international organisations. So if the Russian leadership receives information about the inevitability in the next few hours of a massive nuclear attack on Russia, it has the right (and is even obliged) to strike a preventive nuclear blow, and this doesn’t mean being the first to use a nuclear weapon.

Secondly, this isn’t important at all, since even if a preventive blow will be struck with conventional precision weapons, it will be aimed against regions of basing where the nuclear weapon carriers and anti-missile defense systems threatening Russia are deployed. From the point of view of the military doctrines of both the USSR and Russia, a massive attack of strategic nuclear objects by non-nuclear forces is equated to the beginning of nuclear war and grants the right for a nuclear response. The Americans approach this matter in exactly the same way.

So in principle it doesn’t make any sense to discuss whether or not Vladimir Putin meant a preventive or exclusively reciprocal nuclear or non-nuclear strike by Russia. He absolutely clearly highlighted the sharp increase in the level of danger of a nuclear confrontation. And this is the most important thing, because “who started it first” won’t be important, and nobody will learn or know about it.

So the question that interests us most sound as follows: “Why did the president of Russia start talking about the threat of a nuclear catastrophe right now, when we are passing through not the deepest aggravations of the Syrian and Ukrainian crises, and on the Korean peninsula Seoul and Pyongyang show an unprecedented level of friendliness, seriously discussing the denuclearisation of the peninsula within the framework of the development of inter-Korean dialogue and economic cooperation between the North and the South?”

I am sure that it was a preventive response to the decision of the US to withdraw from the INF Treaty that was announced one day later.

Why did this decision cause such a sharp reaction? After all, the INF Treaty signed in Washington by Gorbachev and Reagan on December 8th, 1987 came into force in June, 1988, and by June, 1991 it had already been implemented. I.e., all complexes falling under the ban were destroyed by both Russia and the US. Moreover, the development of military equipment over the last 30 years allows to assign tasks that were previously being solved by complexes that were destroyed under the Treaty to other systems that, without formally violating the Treaty, are even more effective.

The Treaty forbids the production and deployment of land-based rockets with a range of 500 to 5000 kilometers. But today Russia has in its arsenal the “Iskander” complexes (up to 500 km) and the air/sea-based “Kalibr” cruise missiles have been deployed (they don’t fall under the restrictions of the Treaty, which the Americans insisted on in the past). The declared range of these rockets can reach 1500 kilometers. At the same time certain sources speak about 2000-2500 kilometers. The range of the “Kinzhal” complex (including the range of the carrier) placed on a Tu-22М3 reaches 3000 kilometers. But this is if we bear in mind the combat radius of the aircraft at supersonic. In a mixed regime [using both subsonic and supersonic – ed] the combat radius of the aircraft increases from 1500 to 2500 kilometers, respectively, thus the range of the complex together with the rocket can reach 4000 kilometers.

I.e., without formally violating the Treaty, with the help of the latest developments Russia is capable of solving tasks that last century were completable only by average-range missiles. Moreover, the latest developments that must come to troops in the next 10-12 years in general possess an arbitrary range, i.e., in principle there are no inaccessible targets on planet Earth for them.

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