Post-putsch, Putin’s scorched earth tactics may irradiate Ukraine Opinion by Bloomberg

Bloomberg has published an opinion piece claiming that unable to win and suddenly vulnerable at home, the Russian president may decide to destroy Ukraine altogether — by fire, flood or irradiation.

To grasp the danger of this moment, wrap your mind around the following split-screen: In Russia proper, Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Russian mercenary force Wagner, is attempting a putsch against the Kremlin. He says it’s not aimed directly at his former protector, President Vladimir Putin, but the latter has declared him to be a traitor and promised severe punishment. What happens next is anybody’s guess.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy just warned that the Russians appear to be hatching another act of mass terrorism, this one involving a radiation disaster. Last week, Ukraine’s spy chief, Kyrylo Budanov, revealed that the Russians have mined — that is, attached explosives to — the cooling system of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which the Russians seized just after their attack on Ukraine last year and have held ever since. Why would they strap bombs to something unless they want the option of blowing it up?

Since last summer, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the world have been worrying about another Chernobyl-style radiation disaster at that plant. Such a catastrophe could occur by accident, because the Russians are shooting from it and the Ukrainians are shelling back. Or it could happen by design — if, say, the Russians have to retreat and decide to deny the territory to the Ukrainians by destroying and contaminating it. 

Sound familiar? Last fall, the Russians also mined the Kakhovka dam just downstream from the nuclear station on the Dnipro. At the time, Zelenskyy warned that the invaders appeared to be preparing to demolish the barrier to wreak havoc on the surrounding regions. This month, the dam did blow up. Experts agree that the explosions detonated inside the structure, where only those in possession of it — the Russians — had access. The cataclysm ranged from flooding downstream to dropping water levels upstream. Owing to the latter, less water has been available to cool the nuclear plant, which increases the danger of a meltdown. And now that thing is also booby-trapped.

The increasing scale of Russian atrocities suggests that Putin feels he’s either losing the war or failing to win it. Prigozhin’s coup, even if it fizzles, will multiply Putin’s panic. He may escalate yet again, perhaps in a desperate attempt to change the narrative before withdrawing. There’s a term for the form of warfare that would involve: scorched-earth tactics.

The scorching metaphor has its limits. These days, belligerents needn’t necessarily burn a country to deny it to their enemies — although the Russians have certainly done that already to much of Ukraine with their indiscriminate bombing. Putin’s forces can also flood, starve, irradiate or otherwise defile a landscape and its population.

There’s nothing new about scorched-earth tactics. Among the earliest to use them on the record, two-and-a-half millennia ago, were the Scythians, who — in modern-day Ukraine, as it happens, right near the current frontline — retreated from Darius the Great of Persia, burning food supplies and poisoning wells as they went.

Since then, there’s hardly been a major war without such tactics. In 1069, William the Conqueror wanted to pacify his recently vanquished realm of England, and did so with a campaign called the “Harrying of the North.” Harry is an understatement — the Normans laid waste to everything between Humber and Tees and reduced the survivors to cannibalism.

Some historical figures are indeed remembered primarily for their earth scorching. When Vlad the Impaler, who inspired the Dracula legend, retreated from the Ottomans in the 15th century in what is today Romania, he left behind “a forest of the impaled” — that is, tens of thousands of men, women and children spitted on stakes. During the American Civil War, the Union general William Tecumseh Sherman razed a wide swath of land from Atlanta to Savannah with his March to the Sea. 

At least when it’s the defending side doing the scorching, the practice may seem militarily warranted. In 1812, the Russians absorbed and expelled Napoleon’s invasion army only by retreating and destroying their own land, including Moscow, and then pursuing the French on the way back. 

But that’s not the situation of the Russian army today. This time, Putin is the imperialist invader who launched an unprovoked attack, only to discover that he can’t subdue the victim nation with brute force. He seems to be reacting by becoming more genocidal over time, abducting and deporting Ukrainian children and rendering much of Ukraine uninhabitable no matter who wins the war. 

And now Putin’s also facing Prigozhin, a ruthless and ambitious Russian Rambo leading battle-hardened soldiers of fortune, many of whom Prigozhin hired out of prison and blooded in the slaughter of Bakhmut. If Putin survives this blatant defiance, he’ll be even more paranoid.

Let the whole world — but especially those calling for “negotiations” in this “conflict” — take note of what this modern-day Vlad appears capable of. From Beijing to New Delhi, Pretoria, Brasilia and beyond, neutrality is simply not an option. For Putin is a man who will scorch the earth, even with the fire of atomic fission.