With the rhetoric on both sides of Russia’s war in Ukraine at a fever pitch, it’s hard to know what to believe.
But when a broadcast threatens to put an end to an entire nation — even when it’s coming from a government with a solid reputation for psyops — only fools ignore it completely.
That’s what happened in a disturbingly belligerent Russian video in May, and it’s not like things have calmed down in Europe since.
The video was shared by The Sun, which said it had been produced by “Russian state TV.” It was apparently issued in response to a threat that was never made — Russia was at the time claiming that the U.K.’s then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson had threatened to launch a nuclear strike against Russia without first consulting NATO.
That never happened, according to the prime minister’s office, which called the reports “another example of disinformation peddled by the Kremlin.” That would make this video Russian propaganda produced to respond to other Russian propaganda.
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You can see why it’s hard to know how much to believe when Russian state television says anything.
In this case, the video first explained that “one Sarmat missile” would be enough to destroy England completely. Dmitry Kiselyov, the obviously pro-Putin host of the video, said that the Sarmat — also known as the Satan-2 — was powerful enough to annihilate England in one strike.
He also noted that it would do the same to Texas, in what can only be seen as a not-so-subtle warning to President Joe Biden.
The focus of the video, however, was clearly Johnson and the U.K.
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“Why do they threaten vast Russia with nuclear weapons while they are only a small island?” Kiselyov asked, according to subtitles on the video.
(My Russian is a little rusty.)
Is it just me, or does that largely meaningless size comparison make Kiselyov sound insecure? Compensating for something, Dmitry? Maybe someone should check out the size of his hands.
“A single launch, Boris, and there is no England anymore,” Kiselyov said. “Once and for all.”
But lest the viewer think that Russian President Vladimir Putin has only option for destroying this sceptred isle, Kiselyov then described a second alternative.
“Another option to plunge Britain into the depths of the sea is the Russian underwater robotic drone Poseidon,” he said.
“It approaches the target at a one kilometre depth with the speed of 200 kilometres per hour. There is NO way to stop this underwater drone,” he said (emphasis original).
That, of course, is nothing more than speculation. It’s unlikely that Russia is aware of every weapon and defensive capability in the undersea arsenals of the NATO allies.
“It has a warhead with a capacity of up to 100 megatons,” Kiselyov then claimed.
And that wasn’t speculation — it was simply untrue, or at least highly likely so. I mean, I’m not an expert on Russia’s nuclear weapons program, but I do know that the largest bomb ever made was the U.S.S.R.’s “Tsar Bomba,” which was only about half that size. That was in 1961, at the height of the Cold War, and was created as a propaganda device, since a bomb that size was far too large to be delivered by anything but aircraft. It’s highly unlikely a second bomb that size was ever created — much less one twice as large.
That knowledge makes this video a lot less threatening — which is not to say that no threat exists. It most certainly does.
The question is, would whatever size bomb the Poseidon actually delivered be powerful enough to live up to the threat Kiselyov makes in this video?
“The explosion of this thermonuclear torpedo close to Britain’s shores will raise a giant wave, a tsumani, up to 500 metres high,” he said, a wave that would also carry “extremely high doses of radiation,” leaving the remnants of Britain a “radioactive desert.”
You can believe as much of that as you want to, I suppose, but there’s no doubt that Russia has nuclear weapons sufficient to give the U.K. a Very Bad Day.
You can watch the video here and decide for yourself how credible you believe it to be.
Just don’t ask me for my opinion. I used to work in psyops; I don’t believe anything any government tells me, whether or not they have a reputation for producing propaganda.
