End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity” ~llaw
Sep 23, 2025
The briefcase cheget, which controls Russian nuclear weapons
On My Mind Today:
The risk of a nuclear war created by mistake and begun accidentally by human and/or technical computerized erroneous nuclear related procedural alerts by defense systems and power plants has long been a potential reality — and in fact has been narrowly averted at least once — and as we proceed into AI technologies and their automated surveillance and operations systems chances are that nuclear accidents — of both nuclear weapons and nuclear power — become mathematically more of a progressive possibility.
So it is that our own and other life’s apocalyptic demise on planet Earth could begin and end by nothing more than a huge fatal mistake. “The Telegraph” article below — sans images which were automatically removed by their posting system — deals with a serious possibility of a nation’s “leader” pulling a trigger or pushing a nuclear button by mistake . . . ~llaw
Today’s Featured Story:
Note: All images have been removed from this article, which is posted here for LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD TODAY for research and the public record. ~llaw
The briefcase cheget, which controls Russian nuclear weapons
Putin has his finger on the nuclear trigger. The risk of an accident is enormous
Neither Russia nor the West wants atomic war. But history shows how easily a misunderstanding could lead to disaster
23 September 2025 12:41am BST
On Friday, three Russian MiG-31 Foxhounds, the Kremlin’s primary combat platform for hypersonic Kinzhal missiles (capable of carrying nuclear warheads), violated Estonia’s airspace. It was Russia’s latest incursion into a Nato member, following a series of breaches by drones over Poland and Romania earlier in the month.
This is obviously a dangerous escalation by the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin is likely seeking to build up a clearer picture of how Nato responds to provocations as well as to desensitise Europeans to breaches of their sovereignty. But there is another important element to the story, too. On Tuesday last week, to mark the culmination of a strategic command staff wargame codenamed “Zapad 2025”, Russia simulated the launch of a tactical nuclear strike. It was overseen by Russian President Vladimir Putin wearing a military uniform.
Neither Russia nor Nato wants a direct “kinetic” conflict. But as the war in Ukraine, a proxy confrontation between Moscow and Washington, rages on, the risk of unintentional escalation due to a misunderstanding is rising rapidly.
For five days, Russian forces conducted Zapad jointly with their Belarussian counterparts across 41 training bases in Western Russia and Belarus. The aim was to learn lessons from the current conflict in Ukraine, focused on hybrid strikes, mobile artillery tactics, and counter-drone warfare. Russia held previous Zapad drills in the autumn of 2021, using them as cover to amass approximately 190,000 troops along its Western border prior to the invasion of Ukraine, with the goal of achieving tactical surprise against Kyiv and Nato. Zapad-2021 also involved forces from Belarus, which is now in possession of Russian tactical nuclear weapons.
The Russians regularly practice the authorisation of nuclear weapon strikes as part of military drills, with Putin “pressing the button”, because they believe their leader must be psychologically prepared for this action. This is the result of an important lesson learned during the Soviet era. In 1972, then general secretary Leonid Brezhnev is said to have “trembled” when he was asked to push a button during a command post exercise simulating a war with the US. He kept asking his Defence Minister Andrei Grechko whether it was “definitely an exercise”.
While Western analysts dismissed Putin’s action as an exaggeration, claiming that there has been no real change to Russia’s baseline nuclear posture, US intelligence assessments based on so-called I&Ws (indications and warnings) may only be partially useful in understanding the current threat. The US threat detection framework is structured to detect an imminent threat, rather than provide strategic warning of a pacing threat that develops over time.
Crucially, there is now zero trust between Nato and Russia. Moscow’s long-standing fear that the US is seeking regime change in Russia has been exacerbated by frequent commentary from Western officials stating openly or implying their intention to defeat the Russian military, tank its economy, and remove Putin from power. Ukrainian strikes on the Russian nuclear triad, specifically the strategic bombers that form the centre-piece of Russia’s deterrence and defence strategy, are likely to have further exacerbated those fears.
In November, 1983, Nato was getting ready to practice a nuclear launch in a military exercise, Able Archer 83. Tensions were already high after the Soviets had shot down a South Korean passenger airliner that had strayed off course en route from Anchorage to Seoul. But the Kremlin went into convulsions over Able Archer, assuming that it was the real thing rather than a practice drill.
Russia’s intelligence agencies had been on high alert for two years, having been tasked in 1981 by KGB chairman Yuri Andropov and Brezhnev to look for indications of US intentions to launch a nuclear strike on the USSR. The KGB had issued a computer-generated intelligence estimate, indicating that the “correlation of world forces” dramatically favoured the United States. The result was a massive clandestine intelligence collection programme, codenamed RYAN (Raketno-Yadernoe Napadeniye; “nuclear missile attack” in Russian) to find signposts of US preparations for war with the USSR. It encouraged Soviet leaders to see in the US posture exactly what they had been looking for. A full-scale simulated release of nuclear weapons by Nato forces could only mean one thing to the paranoid Soviets: the beginning of nuclear war.
A mass Soviet nuclear attack awaited only an order from Andropov. There was no communication between Moscow and Washington throughout the crisis to clear up the situation. Fortunately, no order was given, and at the conclusion of the Nato exercise on November 11, 1983, the tension dissipated.
But it could have ended very differently. And the world faces a similar situation today, given the collapse of trust between Russia and the West, as well as the breakdown of key lines of communications.
Neither Nato nor Russia wants to end up in a kinetic dog-fight, let alone a nuclear war. But neither wants to allow the other side to be perceived as winning in Ukraine. Both, expecting an attack from the other, are using their massive intelligence collection systems to look for any signposts of an impending attack to enable quick decision-making.
Interpreting leadership intentions is inherently hard. Not every order can be intercepted and not every intelligence indicator is observable. Confusion and errors, as a result of the proverbial “fog of war”, are standard attributes of armed conflict. The likelihood that, in this pressure cooker environment, a miscalculation will be made with tragic results is very real.
As social media is exploding with President Trump’s ultimatums and the threats issued by Putin’s proxies, if cooler heads do not prevail in Moscow, Washington, and Europe, nuclear war could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rebekah Koffler is a strategic military intelligence analyst, formerly with the US Defense Intelligence Agency. She is the author of ‘Putin’s Playbook’, Regnery 2021. Her next book ‘Trump’s Playbook’ will be published later this year. Rebekah’s podcast Trump’s Playbook is running on her channel Censored But Not Silenced and is available on most social media platforms @Rebekah0132
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TODAY’S ALL NUCLEAR WORLD’s NEWS, Tuesday, (09/23/2025)
All Things Nuclear
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mezha.net
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Power Crisis at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant: A Looming Threat – Devdiscourse
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… emergency power to prevent reactor meltdown. This ongoing situation poses significant risks to nuclear safety in the region. Science & Environment.
Nuclear War Threats
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Putin has his finger on the nuclear trigger. The risk of an accident is enormous – Yahoo
Yahoo
… war games simulating a Russia-Nato conflict, I’m here to tell you why that’s wrong. The threat of nuclear war is at an all time high. The …
Putin has his finger on the nuclear trigger. The risk of an accident is enormous
The Telegraph
Neither Russia nor the West wants atomic war. But the threat of nuclear war is at l time high
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Nuclear War
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Russia says it would be risky to allow nuclear treaty with US to lapse | Reuters
Reuters
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Why is Putin talking about a new nuclear weapons treaty with the US? – Reuters
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… war, and Kyiv and its European allies are saying he is not serious about wanting peace. Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne.
Yellowstone Caldera
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