Alexander Zhilin says Putin reopened the possibility for pre-emptive nuclear attack on West.

28 December 2013

Alexander Zhilin says Putin reopened the possibility for pre-emptive nuclear attack on West. (UkraineBusiness).

UBO: Instead of the current popularly accepted Moscow axiom, i.e. “What Zhirinovsky is saying is what Putin is thinking,” we would suggest that a better barometer of the winds in the Kremlin is Alexander Zhilin. 

A prominent military journalist and retired Air Force colonel, Zhilin could well be the classic example of the military officer who so hated the outcome of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet system that no option is too strong to imagine – including nuclear. In short, the characteristic imputed to Zhirinovsky might be said to better describe Zhilin.

By Paul Goble by “Windows on Eurasia”:

Aleksandr Zhilin, head of the Moscow Center for the Study of Applied Problems and a leading Russian military commentator, says that Vladimir Putin has changed the country’s military doctrine in such a way that it will now allow for consideration of a pre-emptive military attack on the West in response to a range of Western threats.

In a comment for the Regnum news agency, Zhilin says that as Putin made clear at his meetings with the defense ministry collegium, “Russia does not intend to attack anyone.” But “nevertheless,” he continues, Moscow’s “military strategy is changing” in ways that lay the groundwork for an even more aggressive stance than now (regnum.runewspolit1878927.html).

At earlier meetings with the top officials of the Russian defense ministry, Putin “began with the statement that we have no strategic enemies and therefore we do not see military threats to the country.” In the one just concluded, “He did not say this,” And Zhilin says that in his view, Putin “perfectly precisely” declared that Russia does have “a strategic enemy” – the US.

American efforts at building an ABM system and the increased activity of NATO “in Europe and above all in Eastern Europe” are cause for concern, Putin told the session, and consequently, in Zhilin’s telling, Russia must maintain or improve its ability to “destroy or at least inflict an unbearable strike on its opponent on another continent.”

The Russian president told the military commanders that “it is necessary to force ‘the development of all components of the strategic nuclear forces …[because] these forces are the most important factor of maintaining a global balance and in fact preclude the possibility of massive aggression against Russia.”

But even more important as an indication of Moscow’s intentions, Zhilin argues, the meeting shows that “Russia retains for itself the right in the case of a real threat of a nuclear attack by an opponent to launch a preventive one. Under Yeltsin, that point was cut out of our military doctrine” at American insistence, but now it is back.

In Putin’s own words, “Russia as always will consistently defend its interests and sovereignty and will seek to strengthen international stability and support equal security for all states and peoples.” And that means, Zhilin says, that “in the case of danger for Russia in financial, technological or raw material markets, our response can be military.”Read the full story here.