How Moscow fell in love with the atomic bomb - a column by Mikhail Seeger in "Der Spiegel". Part 1/2 The Russian elite no longer perceives nuclear war as an unimaginable catastrophe, but as a very real scenario. Some even see it as a way out of the impasse in Ukraine. For decades, Soviet propaganda led citizens to believe that nuclear war would inevitably claim millions of lives and possibly destroy all of humanity. The nuclear winter was one of the worst scenarios of the Soviet era. When Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan met in Geneva in 1985, they jointly declared that there could be no winners in a nuclear war and that such a war would never happen. This belief continued after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In June 2021, Putin and Biden formally endorsed the same principle at their meeting in Geneva: a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be started. Today it seems that this principle is no longer valid in Russia. Suddenly there was a claim that it was possible to win a nuclear war. Moreover: a nuclear attack could end the current war and allow a return to normal life. Back in October 2023, Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT, raised the question of the possibility of a high-altitude thermonuclear explosion over Siberia. She assured the public that there was no need to fear a disaster: "Nothing is really bad. There won't be a nuclear winter, which everyone is afraid of." The only result, she said, would be the collapse of modern electronics. People will go back to 1993, when there were no smartphones or social networks. Simonian expressed her belief that they would welcome such a development. Political scientist Sergey Karanov developed this idea. He was once one of the most prominent pro-Western figures in Russia and demanded Russia's entry into NATO - ahead of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. However, in June 2023, Kraganov published an article with the subtitle: "The use of nuclear weapons can save humanity from global catastrophe."

How Moscow fell in love with the atomic bomb - a column by Mikhail Seeger in "Der Spiegel". Part 1/2 The Russian elite no longer perceives nuclear war as an unimaginable catastrophe, but as a very real scenario. Some even see it as a way out of the impasse in Ukraine. For decades, Soviet propaganda led citizens to believe that nuclear war would inevitably claim millions of lives and possibly destroy all of humanity. The nuclear winter was one of the worst scenarios of the Soviet era. When Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan met in Geneva in 1985, they jointly declared that there could be no winners in a nuclear war and that such a war would never happen. This belief continued after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In June 2021, Putin and Biden formally endorsed the same principle at their meeting in Geneva: a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be started. Today it seems that this principle is no longer valid in Russia. Suddenly there was a claim that it was possible to win a nuclear war. Moreover: a nuclear attack could end the current war and allow a return to normal life. Back in October 2023, Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT, raised the question of the possibility of a high-altitude thermonuclear explosion over Siberia. She assured the public that there was no need to fear a disaster: "Nothing is really bad. There won't be a nuclear winter, which everyone is afraid of." The only result, she said, would be the collapse of modern electronics. People will go back to 1993, when there were no smartphones or social networks. Simonian expressed her belief that they would welcome such a development. Political scientist Sergey Karanov developed this idea. He was once one of the most prominent pro-Western figures in Russia and demanded Russia's entry into NATO - ahead of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. However, in June 2023, Kraganov published an article with the subtitle: "The use of nuclear weapons can save humanity from global catastrophe."