THE DIRTY BOMB PLOT

The news is that, over the weekend, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called his counterparts in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Turkey, to claim that Ukraine is about to use a “dirty bomb,” which would thus allow Russia to retaliate with nuclear weapons. Today, General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian general staff, called his American and British counterparts to press the same case.

A dirty bomb isn’t a nuclear bomb. It is a “radiological dispersal device,” a conventional explosive wrapped around a lot of dangerous radioactive material. The explosion is not a nuclear detonation, but only the normal explosion of something like TNT, which spreads around a lot of radioactive material, poisoning anyone nearby and rendering the area highly dangerous. The stuff inside a dirty bomb could be nuclear reactor waste, the leftover pieces of a nuclear weapon, even radiological materials from a hospital.

This dirty-bomb charge could be part of the preparation for a Russian “false flag” operation, in which the Russians explode their own dirty bomb in the occupied territories of Ukraine or close to the Russian border; blame Ukraine; then demand Ukraine surrender or face nuclear retaliation. It could also be a way of trying to scare off Ukraine’s Western supporters with threats of escalation.

If Putin and his circle are really considering a dirty-bomb provocation, it is likely because they would see such a plot as solving multiple problems at once. Russia would try to “flip the script,” going from aggressor guilty of multiple war crimes to the victim of a nuclear “event.” It might then issue an ultimatum to Ukraine that elevates the war to a nuclear crisis, which is probably the only way Moscow thinks it can win, now that Putin’s army lies in pieces on the battlefield.

In such a gambit, the Russians would be betting that a faked dirty bomb would alleviate the “first use” stain from any Russian decision to attack, or as they would almost certainly say in this scenario, “retaliate” with a nuclear weapon. With nuclear weapons in play, the West would have to decide just how much to commit to nuclear deterrence on behalf of Ukraine.

Why are the Russians now pushing this? It is likely rooted in Putin’s realization that he has, yet again, humiliated himself in his scheming to prosecute a war he’s been losing since its first days. His attempt to conscript 300,000 Russian males has been a political disaster; reports say that twice that number of Russians have already fled, and even Putin has admitted to “mistakes” and is winding back at least some of the mindless dragooning of his young men.

Threatening this dirty-bomb ruse and risking subsequent escalation makes sense if you’re in a bunker under the Kremlin, but in reality, it is utterly crazy and reckless.

For one thing, no one is going to believe that Ukraine used the dirty-bomb. The Americans, French, and British have already told the Russians as much. That may not matter to Putin, who probably only cares that enough Russians believe it. But that may backfire: One Russian-made dirty bomb followed by a nuclear crisis might panic the Russian public more than Putin expects.

And while the Russians may think calling their nuclear attack a “retaliation” will get them off the hook, it won’t. The story around the dirty bomb will collapse pretty quickly; Russia will stand revealed as a nuclear aggressor, which might finally lead the rest of the world to the conclusion that Putin is an intolerable threat to global peace and security.

Putin could then find himself in a nuclear standoff with the West that neither he nor we want, but that will come anyway because of his own inability to foresee the consequences of his actions, ironic because one of the reasons he’s in this mess is because he has a completely unwarranted confidence in his ability to control events.

If the Russians choose this desperate path, there are multiple roads that could lead to a major East-West nuclear confrontation.

Putin is gambling with the lives of his own people and the world, and we can only hope that Moscow now understands through warnings from Washington, London, Paris, and (ideally) Istanbul, that the attempted fraud will only hasten Russia’s defeat and endanger the existence of the Russian nation itself.

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