By Selwyn Duke

“Whoever tries to impede us, let alone create threats for our country and its people, must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to the consequences you have never seen in history.” So said Russian president Vladimir Putin mere minutes before launching the invasion of Ukraine.

Three days later, the Russian leader put his nuclear forces on “special combat readiness,” a high-alert status. Around the same time, TV anchor Dmitry Kiselyov, known as a venomous Kremlin mouthpiece, boasted to his viewers of Russia’s destructive nuclear capacity and then echoed the Puntinesque principle, “’Why do we need the world if Russia isn’t there?”

All this may just reflect another Russian principle, a military one: “Escalate to deescalate” (that is, to intimidate and extract concessions). Yet there’s another possibility.

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