Dimitris Konstantakopoulos interviewed Konstantin Sivkov for DefendDemocracy.press. Sivkov is Doctor of Military Sciences, with prior service at the Center for Military Strategic Research of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Missile and Artillery Sciences (RARAN), former President of the Academy of Geopolitical Issues, and regular columnist and commentator in military journals.
The declared aim of the interview is to have hawks such as Karaganov being countered by competent sources in order to dissipate the impression in the West that Russia might recur to the use of nuclear weapons. Sivkov, himself a hawk, makes clear his view that the superiority of the Russian military machine over NATO’S capabilities obviates the need for Russia to use nuclear weapons.
Sivkov makes the point that even a “small” nuclear war between Russia and France would destroy Europe as well as one-third of Russian territory. Therefore, Moscow is restraining from using nuclear weapons even in cases in which present Russian military doctrine might justify it, or at the least contemplate it.
For example, of the recent Ukrainian attacks on military targets in the Krasnoyarsk area, “In the Krasnoyarsk area, there are no objects of strategic significance,” Sivkov says. “That is, radar stations for anti-ballistic-missile surveillance—we have such, this is known from open sources—but no such radar stations were hit. As for the strikes on our strategic aviation aircraft, first of all, they were carried out from Russian territory. This was, above all, an operation by Ukrainian special services; it was not the Ukrainian armed forces that carried out this strike. According to the Russian Nuclear Doctrine, this could be a ground for transitioning to the use of nuclear weapons.
