Analyzing the risk of nuclear conflict in Europe

In the latest grim development in Russia’s nuclear weapons policy, President Vladimir Putin suggested on September 25 that the Kremlin could use nuclear weapons against any state that attacked Russia if that country was backed by a nuclear power.

If Russia were to launch a massive nuclear attack on Ukraine or Western Europe, there would be little the continent could do to stop it.

Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), is widely regarded as the world’s leading Western expert on Russia’s nuclear weapons. He says there is no indication that such a catastrophe is close to becoming a reality, but he paints a grim picture of how a nuclear attack on Europe would play out.

“If there was some sort of massive launch — or multiple (Russian) missiles were launched — then it’s almost impossible to guarantee that everything will be intercepted,” he says.

NATO’s internal calculations they are said to foretell that in the event of an all-out attack by Russia, the military bloc has “less than 5 percent” of the air defenses it needs.

Russia is believed to have around 1,700 nuclear warheads inside more than 500 missiles that can be launched within minutes from silos, mobile launchers, submarines and aircraft. The United States would probably be the primary target, but many of those missiles are known to be destined for Europe.

But if missile barrages are effectively unstoppable, what are civilians supposed to do in the event of a nuclear attack?

Some European capitals maintain Cold War-era nuclear shelters that are quietly being refurbished. in Kiev, a nuclear bunker was recently reopened and made available for use.

In Prague, a network of Cold War bunkers has seen a surge in local interest since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The bunkers “are still functional since the fall of socialism and can be activated if necessary,” Jan Mikes, head of the Prague 2 district mayor’s crisis management department, confirmed to RFE/RL.

A spokeswoman for the Czech Republic’s Fire Service told RFE/RL that starting in 2023, the service began updating “requirements for the shelter system and for the shelters themselves,” without elaborating.

In Germany’s Ahr Valley near Bonn, Heike Hollunder, director of a nuclear bomb shelter that now functions as a museum, reported a significant recent increase in visitors.

“Interest has increased, especially among young people, because of the war in Ukraine,” he told RFE/RL. “Could he still use the bunker? Is there a government nuclear bunker in Berlin? These are the main questions.”

But such drastic precautions are probably futile. Podvig says a Russian nuclear attack would give precious little time to escape to a fortified shelter. From launch to impact on a target in Central Europe, Podvig estimates, “would be on the order of about 10 minutes.”

The United States maintains a satellite network capable of instantly spotting the plume of a missile being launched, but that system would probably be useless to countries close to Russia.

“The United States has all these kinds of warning systems — satellites and all that. But I would doubt that this information could be shared very quickly or at all with US allies in European states,” says Podvig.

The models of what modern nuclear weapons would do to cities make grim reading. A single Russian Topol-M the rocket would explode into a kilometer wide fireball that would incinerate every living thing it touched. Within 7 kilometers, countless civilians would die of severe burns and be crushed under the rubble of buildings destroyed by the shock wave. Then would follow the radiation that would saturate the site of the explosion and poison the air and water.

British military historian Basil Liddel Hart witnessed a 1955 war game in which NATO went through a scenario of full-scale nuclear war with the Soviet Union. NATO won the trade, but as the hypothetical dust settled, almost every treasure of the Western world lay in ruins. Deer he later described the experience as “very disturbing”.

Victoria, he wrote, had “missed the point”.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev he is reported to have said that after nuclear war “the living will envy the dead.”

UNIDIR’s Podvig is cautious about revealing his own calculations.

“I just try not to think about it because I know some catastrophic scenarios that are pretty bad,” he says.

As at the height of the Cold War, the only strong deterrent today is the mutually assured destruction of the West’s own stockpile of hundreds of nuclear missiles, along with a controversial launch-on-warning (LOW) policy.

The LOW position allows the United States to launch retaliatory strikes if missiles are detected, before any impact on US territory. The policy would prevent America’s own nuclear weapons from being destroyed in situ, but leaves open the possibility of a civilization-ending error.

Despite ever-increasing tensions between Russia and the West, Podvig says a nuclear apocalypse remains only a distant prospect.

“I think before we get to that, to real possibility, we’re going to see quite a few types of escalation steps,” he says.

Along with the specific rhetoric, Podvig predicts, “we would see some gun movements and things like that.”

He says he’s confident it remains “highly unlikely that this is something out of the blue.”

Via RFE/RL

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