Putin may be about to throw a nuclear tantrum

“Putin’s worst fear is being ignored, becoming nobody." Will disputing his Mariupol 'victory' give him nightmares?

MARIUPOL, UKRAINE - 2022/04/14: A Russian soldier updates a local woman who had been sheltering underground for over a month about the situation in Eastern Mariupol. The battle between Russian / Pro Russian forces and the defending Ukrainian forces led by the Azov battalion continues in the port city of Mariupol. (Photo by Maximilian Clarke/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

“Putin’s worst fear is being ignored, becoming nobody." Will disputing his Mariupol 'victory' give him nightmares?

The devil no longer lurks in the shadows, it's in the Kremlin and on the march toward Ukraine and, potentially further into Europe.

Its horns have been replaced by weapons of mass destruction and it answers to Vladimir Putin, who is on the brink of letting it off the chain.

As news broke of Russia's new powerful missiles, called "Satan 2", Putin claimed victory in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Friday.

A call which is being disputed by Ukraine and the United States. Yet much of the Ukrainian port city is in ruins and has been reportedly close to falling for weeks with Ukrainian civilian soldiers still bunkering down and in the steelworks plant.

Much of Mariupol has been destroyed by weeks of heavy Russian bombardment and intense street fighting.

A man walks with a bicycle in downtown Mariupol. Picture: Alexander Nemenov/AFP

One of the last Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol said the besieged steelworks where they are holed up is largely destroyed above ground and people are trapped under collapsed buildings.

Speaking from the Azovstal plant - the last part of Mariupol not under Russian control - Svyatoslav Palamar from the controversial Azov regiment said defenders had repelled waves of Russian attacks.

"I always say that as long as we are here, Mariupol remains under control of Ukraine," he told the BBC.

Earlier President Vladimir Putin called off a planned Russian assault on the steelworks - which is a network of mazes and workshops - and ordered his troops to seal it off instead.

It's where about 500 Ukrainian marines, like Palamar, are holed up, outnumbered 12 to one by the invaders and fearing they face imminent death.

Ukrainians walk through a destroyed neighborhood in Eastern Mariupol that has recently come under control of Russia. Picture: Maximilian Clarke

Sorry, you mentioned Putin has new weapons? 

He does.

Defence experts claim Russia already had the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear warheads and ICBMs - intercontinental ballistic missiles - with “already considerable destructive potential”, according to reports in The Times of London.

And now it's testing some new ones, like this long range horror show, dubbed "Satan 2" by Western analysts. 

Russia has test-launched this new ICBM which is capable of firing up to 15 nuclear warheads in a single strike, the Kremlin has claimed.

But as The Australian reflected in an editorial:

"[This] Sarmat missile is formidable, purportedly designed to deploy numerous nuclear warheads or other weapons from its main 100-tonne missile at hypersonic speed. With a range of 18,500km, a single Sarmat missile armed with 10 or more warheads could obliterate separate targets across a destruction zone of 650,000sq km – about the size of the whole of Ukraine. Russian officials claimed the televised test launch presided over by the boastful Russian President was a 'present to NATO and all sponsors of Ukro-Nazism'.

"But the democratic nations that have come together to aid Ukraine should not be cowed. The supply of Western arms rushed to Ukraine, boosted with new supplies of heavy field guns and tanks, should be stepped up."

Thursday’s warning by the Five Eyes intelligence network, which includes Australia, that Putin is set to launch powerful cyber attacks against democracies helping Ukraine is serious cause for concern the experts like William Alberque, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said.

But, after eight weeks of a pitiable performance by Russian forces, whose main aims seem to be killing civilians, raping women and flattening apartment blocks, all the advice seems to suggest that Putin must continue to be denied the victory he craves.

“Putin’s worst fear is being ignored, becoming nobody. And this will guarantee that people will have nightmares about him," Alberque said.