Putin ‘knows destroying nuclear plant would be suicide’, says expert
Vladimir Putin, throughout his war on Ukraine, has hinted that he would not hesitate to use Russia’s nuclear arsenal if he was provoked by the West.
His latest threat, Ukraine claims, involves huge mines laid around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – the biggest installation of its kind in Europe.
That has raised fears that he could be planning to deliberately trigger a Chernobyl-style nuclear incident – potentially irradiating large parts of Ukraine and other countries beyond.
READ MORE: Nuclear disaster fears as Ukraine claim Putin will blow up Zaporizhzhia plant overnight
But Professor Anthony Glees, an internationally recognised expert on security and intelligence matters, tells the Daily Star that the former KGB agent is almost certainly bluffing.
“Putin, true to the KGB tradecraft of his early days, is desperately doing his best to threaten and terrorise Ukraine and its allies and kill as many innocent Ukrainians as he can,” he says.
“But,” the professor adds, “he will not start a nuclear fight because he knows that to do so would be suicidal, for Russia and himself”.
"Yes, [Putin] wants the world to think he is totally happy to convert the nuclear energy plant into a 'theatre' nuclear weapon in order to deter Ukraine from making further advances into the south eastern sector of Russian controlled territory," the professor adds.
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"Yes he wants Ukraine and Europe to fear another Chernobyl. And yes he is a cold, calculating murderer who does not balk at killing civilians with rockets and drones.
"But he wants to win, as far as he can, he does not want to be destroyed by the war of aggression that he has started, one which he is increasingly looking like losing. He wants to live, not to die."
On Saturday Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, claimed the threat at Europe's biggest nuclear power plant was “serious”.
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But Professor Glees believes that Putin’s goal is to slow Ukraine’s advance with propaganda, rather than plutonium: “The Zaporizhzhia plant is located in contested territory,” he says, “and is directly in the path of the slowly advancing Ukrainian forces.
“Putin wants to stop them in their tracks and is using the threat of nuclear explosions, which he says would be caused by Ukraine, to do so.”
However, he adds: “Putin may well seek to contaminate the territory in which the Zaporizhzhia plant is situated, just as he blew up the Kakhovka dam to make it hard for Zelensky's troops to advance towards Crimea.
“Even if there's little danger to the people of Ukraine and Europe, more generally, any release of any radioactive debris would be a problem for the Ukrainian army, they'd have to take iodine tablets and we'd get to know about this fairly soon over the next few days”.
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