The United States prepared “rigorously” for a possible Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine in late 2022

(CNN) — In late 2022, the United States began “rigorously preparing” for a possible Russian nuclear weapons strike on Ukraine, the first nuclear weapon in warfare since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly eighty years ago. There will be an attack. , two senior administration officials told CNN.

Officials said the Biden administration was particularly concerned that Russia could use tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons.

I first reported that U.S. officials were worried that Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon in 2022, but in my new book, “The Return of the Great Powers,” published March 12, I spoke exclusively about the unprecedented level of planning. Details have been revealed. This was done to such an extent that concern over the situation increased among senior officials of the Biden administration.

The first senior officer I spoke to told me, “That’s the scenario the conflict presented us with, that’s how we believed it, and I think we needed to prepare rigorously and do everything possible to prevent that from happening.” Had the right to try.”

What prompted the Biden administration to make such a surprising assessment was not any single indicator, but a set of events, analyses, and, importantly, highly sensitive new intelligence.

The administration’s fear, a second senior official told me, “was not just imaginary, it was also based on some of the information we collected.”

“We have to plan to be in the best possible position if this already unimaginable event actually occurs,” the same source told me.

During this period from late summer to autumn 2022, the National Security Council convened a series of meetings to implement contingency plans “to evaluate how we would respond in the event of a very clear indication that They were about to do something, attack with a nuclear weapon, or if they just did it. We evaluated how we would try to stop or prevent it,” the first senior administration official told me.

The same executive told me, “It is likely that many of us were not prepared to get our jobs back and were not spending enough time preparing for a scenario that a few years ago was believed to be a bygone era.” The thing is.”

Russians surrounded

The end of the summer of 2022 was proving disastrous for Russian forces in Ukraine. Ukrainian forces were advancing south toward Russian-held Kherson. The city was Russia’s greatest prize since the invasion. Now he was in danger of being defeated by a Ukrainian counter-attack. Importantly, as Ukrainian forces advanced, entire Russian units were in danger of being surrounded. The view within the administration was that such catastrophic damage could be a “potential trigger” for the use of nuclear weapons.

President Vladimir Putin at the Navy Day parade in St. Petersburg in July 2022. (Stringer/Getty Images/File)

The first senior administration official said, “If large numbers of Russian forces were defeated, if their lives were shattered, that would be a kind of harbinger of a direct potential threat to Russian territory or the Russian state.”

He said, “At that time there were increasing signs in Kherson that the Russian lines might collapse. Thousands of Russian soldiers were potentially unprotected.”

Russia was losing ground in the sovereign territory of Ukraine, not within Russia. But US officials worried that President Vladimir Putin would see it differently. He told the Russian people that Kherson was now part of Russia and so they could view any catastrophic damage there as a direct threat to them and the Russian state.

The first senior administration official said, “Our assessment has been for some time that the scenarios in which they would consider (involving) the use of nuclear weapons included things like existential threats to the Russian state, direct threats to Russian territory “

In such an assessment, Russia might consider a tactical nuclear strike against further loss of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine as well as a deterrent against any potential attack against Russia.

false flag

At the same time, Russia’s propaganda machine was circulating a new false story about a Ukrainian dirty bomb, leading U.S. officials to fear it could provide cover for a Russian nuclear attack.

In October 2022, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made several phone calls to defense officials from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Turkey, telling them that the Kremlin was “concerned about possible provocations by Kiev.” Which included the use of a dirty bomb.

The United States and other Western officials dismissed Russian warnings. Nevertheless, Russia’s ambassador to the UN sent a letter directly to the UN detailing the same alleged threat. Russian officials alleged that Ukraine would create and detonate a dirty bomb against Russian forces and then blame the attack on Russia.

US officials dismissed the Russian warnings but expressed apprehension about the motivation behind them. “The Russian public messaging about the possibility of Ukraine using dirty bombs came from the leftist camp, which we felt was not based on anything real,” the first senior administration official told me. What was “more worrying” for this officer was that the Russians would do these things “either as an excuse to do something crazy or under the guise of doing something they were thinking about doing themselves. It was quite worrying. “

But there was another piece that took those concerns to a new level. Western intelligence agencies had received information that a nuclear attack was now apparently being discussed in communications between Russian officials.

As the first senior administration official described it to me, “There were indications that we were finding out through other means that this was at least something that was being discussed at the lower levels of the Russian system.”

US access to internal Russian communications has already proven its capabilities. In the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine, the United States intercepted Russian military commanders discussing preparations for the invasion, communications that were part of a U.S. intelligence assessment, later found to be accurate, that the invasion was imminent.

“This is never a cut-and-dry, black-and-white assessment,” the first senior administration official told me. “But the level of risk appears to be increasing, even higher than at any other time.”

Would the United States know?

At no time did the United States detect intelligence indicating that Russia was taking steps to mobilize its nuclear forces to carry out such an attack.

“We have clearly given a high priority to tracking and at least we have some capability to monitor such activities of their nuclear forces,” a senior administration official told me. “And at no point did we see any indication of what kinds of steps we would expect them to take if they were moving toward using nuclear weapons.”

A mock warhead replicating the nuclear part of the Kh-55SM strategic cruise missile, which was used by Russian troops during missile attacks against Ukraine, is seen during a press conference in Kiev, Ukraine, in December 2022. (Nurfoto/Getty Images)

However, US officials were unsure whether Russia was deploying tactical nuclear weapons. Unlike strategic nuclear weapons capable of destroying entire cities, tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons are small enough to move silently and can be fired from conventional systems already deployed on Ukrainian battlefields.

“If what they were going to do was use a tactical nuclear weapon, especially a very low yield tactical nuclear weapon, and especially if they were going to use only one or a very small quantity, then I’m not sure we know that,” he continued. Senior administration official.

Several sources within the Bien government participated in an urgent outreach campaign. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “very directly” about US concerns, according to senior officials. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley called his Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. President Joe Biden sent CIA Director Bill Burns to speak to Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, in Turkey to convey US concerns about a nuclear attack and evaluate Russian intentions, according to a senior US official. .

The United States worked closely with its allies to develop contingency plans for a Russian nuclear attack and to warn the Russian side about the consequences of such an attack.

The first senior administration official told me, “We held a series of quiet conversations with key aides to discuss our ideas!” With our allies.”

India and China

Additionally, the United States attempted to enlist the help of non-allied countries, particularly China and India, to prevent Russia from carrying out such an attack.

Another senior administration official told me, “One of the things we did was not only to convey the message directly to them, but also to strongly urge, pressure, and persuade other countries, who might pay more attention, to do the same. To encourage.”

US officials say disclosures and public statements by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi helped avert the crisis.

“I think showing the international community concern about this, especially Russia and the concern of key countries to the global South, was a useful and motivating factor and showed them what the cost of all this could be,” said the first. Said. senior officer.

Another senior administration official told me, “I think the fact that we know that China intervened, India intervened and others intervened may have had some impact on their thinking.” “I can’t prove it with certainty, but I think that’s our assessment.”

Since the nuclear crisis in late 2022, I have asked US and European officials whether they have identified similar threats. As the war entered a period of relative stagnation in the east, the threat diminished. However, the United States and its allies remain cautious.

“We are less concerned about emerging possibilities since that period, but it is not something that is completely off the radar,” a senior US official told me. “We continue to refine plans and … it is not beyond the possibility that we may face at least an increased risk of this in the coming months.”