MOSCOW — Managers of the Zenit Arena, a giant half-built stadium in St. Petersburg, received an official letter from the Ministry of Emergency Situations last week demanding that they immediately create shelter facilities for wartime. The stadium, under construction for the upcoming World Cup 2018, is located outside the city boundaries, the letter said, but in case of nuclear attack it is in the potential “zone of war destruction and radiation fallout.”

The last time Russians heard authorities talk like this about a potential mobilization for a nuclear strike was 20 years ago, and it all seemed highly improbable. Now, it appears, the Kremlin is not joking. Up to 40 million people participated in recent civil-defense exercises all across the country, learning about how to hide and where exactly to run to in case of a nuclear war.

But whether the motive behind this is self-defense, an implied threat to the West, a means to mobilize and control public opinion, or all of the above, is not entirely clear.

“I personally plan to stock 200 cans of pork to be ready for a potential war crisis,” Markov told The Daily Beast in an interview, “and I advise everybody to do the same.”

State Duma Deputy Vadim Dengin said he hoped that there would be no war with United States. “I cannot understand why the West cannot just leave us in peace, let us be,“ the official said. “Americans should realize that it will be their children looking for shelters, too, if they are serious about attacking Russia.“

On Thursday, Vladimir Gladkov, a 19-year-old student, said he heard from a neighbor that the closest bomb shelter to his apartment building was Kitai Gorod metro station.

A thermonuclear bomb on Moscow?

Gladkov, who was born years after the Soviet Cold War with the United States was over, sounded frustrated: “Americans are not crazy to bomb us, I am not sure why our authorities want people to experience hysterical panic attacks. Maybe somebody feels annoyed that we feel too free and happy,” he suggested.

During the impoverished years of the early 1990s, thousands of Russians moved to settlements in the Taiga seeking mystical salvation. Over 3,000 believers in Christ Vissarion still live in the Siberian woods waiting for theEnd of Light.

In 2012 many in Russia waited in fear for the Mayan Doomsday. People bought bottles of vodka, matches, and candles to survive the dark times.

There is an expression that every Russian knows well: “To save for a black day.” And there are so many black days in Russian history—not just days, but years of devastation.

“My life is just one everlasting black day,” says Baba Zoya, an old woman living alone in the village of Bezvodnoye in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The 82-year-old pensioner finds winters especially hard to survive.

“On some cold winter days when every joint, every bone hurts, I have no energy to go out and buy a piece of bread,” she told The Daily Beast. Her only comforts are her old dog and a falling-apart armchair outside of her old dark wood isba, a Russian traditional log house. She remembers World War II only too well—dozens of Bezvodnoye men left one day and never came back. “I wish, my dear, that you live your life without such awful memories,” she said.

Read More

Russia is preparing for nuclear war 

• Alex Lockie

Across Russia, 40 million civilians and military personnel just finished up emergency drills aimed at preparing the general population for nuclear or chemical-weapons attacks, The Wall Street Journal’s Thomas Grove reports.

Video shows Russian civilians practicing along with officials and workers in hazardous-material protective suits.

But as troubling as the largest civil defense drills since the height of the Cold War have been, the steps Russia has taken to improve its offensive nuclear capabilities likely overshadow them.

Since the breakdown of US-Russia talks on the fate of Syria, Russia has pulled out of a nuclear-nonproliferation agreement with the US, citing “unfriendly acts” by America. It has moved nuclear-capable missiles to its European enclave of Kaliningrad, and threatened “asymmetrical” and “painful” actions against the US should it decide to impose sanctions on Russia over Syria. 

Additionally, Russia’s state-run media has been ratcheting up anti-American rhetoric.

Lev Gudkov, head of the Russian polling group Levada-Center, told The Journal that in Russia “most people believe that the Third World War has begun, but right now we are still in the cold phase of the war, which may or may not turn into a hot war.”

In Syria and the Ukraine, Russia has turned away from diplomacy and toward military solutions to standoffs with the West. Russia’s recent installation of another missile defense battery in Syria gives the US very few options to intervene without risking serious casualties.

Further, Russia designed its nuclear weapons arsenal as absolute doomsday devices that rain up to 10 high-yield nuclear warheads down on targets at Mach 23 in a salvo that the US can’t possibly hope to intercept.

The US has long relied on the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” — that is, having a spread-out, autonomous, and effective nuclear arsenal that would return fire should another nuclear power attack — with the intent of deterring any nuclear attacks. But sources told The Journal that Moscow is now taking steps to ensure that 100% of its population would be sheltered from such an attack.

Far from matching Russia’s aggressive nuclear posturing, the US has had its attentions elsewhere. The US’s long-range bomber aircraft, the most visible deterrent of a nuclear arsenal, have mainly been stationed in the Pacific in response to North Korea’s nuclear aggression.

Source

#nuclearwar #russia #putin #syria #distraction #hillary #election #trump #wikileak #email