In February 2023, a large group of representatives of the Ukrainian community and the wider community of experts, at the request of Ukrainian defenders and with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation, finalised the work on the Sustainable Peace Manifesto “The World after our Victory. Never again 2.0“.

The document was immediately presented at the Munich Security Conference, and on March 4th it was presented at the Kyiv Art Arsenal.

Since then, it has been presented at authoritative international venues in Europe, North America, East Asia and in 13 Ukrainian cities. This is a multifaceted complex document, which contains a specific section related to the disarmament and denuclearisation of Russia.

From the Sustainable Peace Manifesto:

“The need to denuclearise Russia is dictated by the unprecedented attack by a nuclear state on a non-nuclear NPT signatory country, which voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons.

The driver of Russian aggression

Oil sanctions against the Russian Federation, which were adopted in the sixth sanctions package on May 30, 2022 and introduced by the G7 countries and the EU from December 5th, 2022 and from February 5th, 2023 in relation to petroleum products, brought a limited reduction in oil revenues.

These sanctions brought Russia back to the 2021 income level. At that time, all energy exports combined brought the Russian Federation $253.2 billion in revenue.

Of course, this is significantly less than in the abnormally high income year of 2022, when energy resources provided $409 billion.

“However, the revenues expected at the end of 2023 will be enough to fill the war budget, by reducing other budget expenditures.”

Nuclear component

Although the nuclear fuel component in the total volume of energy exports of the Russian Federation is small, when compared with oil, gas, or even coal revenues, its significance lies elsewhere.

Not only nuclear fuel is an export item. Rosatom State Corporation provides a wide range of services for the maintenance of nuclear power units of Soviet / Russian design operating abroad, and also implements a number of projects for the construction of new nuclear power plants (33 power units in 10 countries) with a budget of tens of billions of dollars.

Rosatom’s empire is not limited to nuclear energy, as is often mistakenly believed.

In fact, this corporation covers the entire nuclear industry of Russia, starting with the extraction of uranium-containing raw materials and ending with the production of nuclear warheads.

But if you search in various sources, you will find out that the Russian Federal Nuclear Centre — the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics – VNIITF supports and develops 35 basic critical technologies of the nuclear weapons complex of the Russian Federation, as stated on the website of the Centre.

And here is another revelation, which was removed from open access, (but, as we know, the global web preserves everything!):

Sarov (former Arzamas-16 with the Avangard Electromechanical Plant), Lesnoi (former Sverdlovsk-45 with the Elektrokhimpribor Combine) are all closed towns under Rosatom’s umbrella, where mass production of the entire range of nuclear munitions is carried out.

Therefore, when Russian nuclear fuel, reactors from Rosatom or other nuclear equipment are purchased abroad, they are actually financing Russian programs for the development and creation of nuclear weapons, with which the Kremlin blackmails the world and specific Western buyers of its products and services.

It is especially telling that this list includes the USA and France, which are evading the sanctions against Rosatom the most.

Will the persuasion method work?

As we know, the current Russian regime is actually destroying the legacy of the period of nuclear disarmament, which was initiated during the Cold War.

In February 2023, Russia announced the suspension of its participation in the New START Treaty. This was the seventh agreement in the sphere of limiting strategic offensive arms, if we count from 1972, when the first one was signed between the USA and the USSR.

The New START Treaty, which was signed in 2010 by the then presidents of the Russian Federation and the United States, Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama, entered into force in 2011.

It was designed for 10 years. In 2021, Russia extended it for another 5 years – until 2026 – and two years later, the Kremlin decided to suspend its participation in the treaty, although such an option is not provided for in its provisions.

This step confirms that, on the one hand, the Russian Federation wants to hide from the US the deplorable state of its strategic nuclear arsenal and therefore limits its control possibilities according to the treaty, and on the other hand, it removes obstacles to start its accelerated modernisation and expansion.

The argument that Russia does not have enough resources and technology for this is rather dubious against the background of the example of North Korea, which never had enough resources or technology, but implemented programs to create nuclear weapons and their carriers.

Iran, whose successes in the missile program are no longer in doubt, will soon become such an example. Russia is neither North Korea nor Iran.

Rosatom is able to implement the new nuclearisation program of the “gas station masquerading as a country”.

About 35 preserved critical technologies for the production of nuclear weapons were discussed above. Against the background of the Kremlin’s nuclearisation actions, the goal of Russia’s denuclearisation takes on special significance.

The well-known Czech expert of Russian origin, Yuriy Fyodorov, notes in the Black Sea Security Journal that after the end of the war, it is necessary to show and convince Russia that its rejection of nuclear disarmament will force the West:

• to increase the combat capability of the US strategic nuclear forces based on land and air;
• to deploy nuclear and high-precision non-nuclear weapons on the European defence system, capable of preemptively eliminating command centers, Russian nuclear weapons and their carriers, intended for use against both NATO member states and non-NATO member states.

A critical factor in the success of Russia’s denuclearisation process is the determination of the West to defeat Russia with the threat of preventive use of nuclear and high-precision non-nuclear weapons.

Russia’s denuclearisation is necessary to ensure global and European security, but according to Yuriy Fyodorov, it will become a reality only after Russia is convinced of the West’s determination to achieve strategic nuclear superiority.

The United States is able to demonstrate this: it has retained the technological potential to increase both the arsenal of nuclear warheads and the number of missile carriers. The forced termination of Sentinel’s program to deploy new LGM-35A ICBMs to replace the Minuteman III demonstrates just such capabilities.

By the way, Great Britain is also modernising its nuclear forces — producing new warheads to replace the existing ones, as well as replacing Vanguard-type nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines with new Dreadnoughts.

The only question is whether the method of persuasion will work for the Kremlin regardless of who will be its master.

Therefore, as a supplement to the arguments, a parallel process of forcing the Russian Federation to denuclearisation should be launched. As they say, a kind word can accomplish a lot, but a kind word and a gun can achieve much more.

Sanctions whip

Of course, the United States, Great Britain, and Ukraine have included enterprises of the Russian nuclear military-industrial complex in the sanctions lists.

But these sanctions from the Western partners are selective. Rosatom officially has in its structure 400 enterprises and organisations.

Nothing prevents it from continuing to trade in uranium-containing raw materials (not only its own, by the way) and keeping under control its largest producer — Kazakhstan.

Nothing prevents the corporation from continuing to implement its projects in third countries.

Shortly before Christmas, good news came from Washington.

After a year and a half of procrastination and evasion in the West of the sanctions against Rosatom, the lower house of the US Congress approved a draft law banning the import of Russian uranium-containing raw materials for the production of nuclear fuel.

Good news also came from Dubai, where the COP28 climate summit ended.

For the first time, it recorded a global agreement to phase out the use of fossil fuels by 2050. Of course, they could not make a plan-schedule, but they fixed the beginning. This enables additional pressure and sanctions on the Russian petrocracy.

First of all, this concerns the extraction of oil, gas and coal in the Arctic, where Russia is pursuing its industrial expansion.

This will lead to accelerated additional greenhouse gas emissions due to anthropogenic activity in the sensitive permafrost zone, which is rapidly melting along with the Arctic ice, releasing billions of tons of not only CO2, but also the more dangerous CH4 methane.

The logical next step of the Western community should be to ban the use of fossil energy resources mined in the Arctic zone (Yamal, Hydan, Taimyr) in the industrialised countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Here, we need not only the appropriate political will of the G7 leaders, primarily the USA, Britain and France as the leading countries — members of the “nuclear club”, but also the political will of the leaders of the EU and NATO.

“It is important to act in advance and stop a new wave of Russian energy expansion through liquefied gas, the production and export of which Russia is increasing at an accelerated pace precisely in the Arctic, trying to put Europe on a modified gas needle.”

“Rosatom” carries a lot of weight here, providing not only icebreaking support for LNG tankers, but also the construction of 15 mobile nuclear power plants in the PMS zone to support large-scale resource extraction projects with electricity.

Preventive actions

Undoubtedly, the current Kremlin regime will not lead to protests by the OECD regarding the halting of mining projects in the Arctic.

Russia demonstrated this by its intention to withdraw from the UN Convention on the International Law of the Sea in 1982, encroaching on additional shelf areas of the Arctic seas.

In general, the intentions of the Kremlin, if we take into account the fairly systematic increase of the military presence in the Arctic, can be understood.

And if you look back 90 years, you can see that the strategy for the Arctic was formulated by Stalin when he visited the Kola Peninsula. “What is the Black Sea? A basin of water. What is the Baltic? A bottle. But the cork is not ours. But this one is the sea. This is the window. We should have a large fleet here. From here we will be able to take both England and America, if necessary. There is nowhere else.” — this is a clear and unambiguous formulation of the current vision of Putin’s Kremlin, which increasingly wants to resemble Stalin’s.

Its goal is to close the Arctic in the Eurasian sector to outsiders, that is, to Western countries, the EU and the NATO.

For this, it is important to control the entry-exit zones to/from the Arctic through checkpoints.

Such is Wrangel Island in the eastern sector of the Arctic, which makes it possible to monitor the Bering Strait, which includes the PMS.

In the western sector of the Arctic, the Svalbard archipelago, located at the junction of the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic, has such a controlling position.

The peculiarity of the archipelago is that, although it is Norwegian, according to the Svalbard Treaty of 1920, it is demilitarised and the economic activities of the participating parties are allowed on it.

Moscow wanted to place its military base on the archipelago since post-war times. However, Norway refused the USSR this and joined NATO.

However, the USSR took advantage of the right of economic presence, so now the current Russian Federation can resort to hybrid options of a creeping capture of the archipelago, with the aim of somehow later securing the status of “Our Landlord” by landing a contingent of “snowmen” (in Russia, Svalbard is often referred to as Grumant, emphasising, they say, Russian Pomors discovered and developed it).

Of course, this will be done accompanied by a propaganda argument to prevent the militarisation of the archipelago by NATO.

One of the motives behind development of the long-range Zircon hypersonic cruise missile was to provide Russia’s Northern Fleet with missile carriers that would help shoot through large spaces at considerable distances.

From this point of view, the placement of submarines and frigates of the Russian fleet in the fjords of Svalbard will enable it to keep under fire control the space between the archipelago and the Norwegian coast in the southern direction and between the islands and Greenland in the northwestern direction.

In other words, here Moscow wants to repeat the actions of the Third Reich, when the Kriegsmarine, then based in the fjords of Svalbard, attacked Allied ships and convoys heading from the North Atlantic to the USSR during the Second World War.

“And this is where Norway and NATO should act in advance, placing forces and means of anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense and anti-ship complexes on the archipelago.”

Allied navies will be able to block the entry/exit of oil tankers and LNG tankers into the Arctic, citing the need to stop the harmful extraction of fossil fuels. It is necessary to speak with the violator of international law in his language – the language of force and preemptive actions, and not a belated reaction, which the Kremlin perceives as a manifestation of the indecision and weakness of the Western alliances and, above all, the USA.

Interestingly, Wrangel Island does not actually belong to Russia.

At one time, in 1924, the gunboat “Red October” simply captured it, throwing out a small group of Americans.

In 2022, the USA timidly raised the question of the basis on which this American island is controlled by Russia. So, somewhere deep in America, there is a process of rethinking Arctic realities and forming new approaches.

Nunquam periculum sine periculo vincitur

Russian blackmail of the world with the threat of using nuclear weapons can be stopped only by decisive actions of the West.

The ultimate goal, as stated in the Manifesto, is the denuclearisation of Russia, which must be motivated not only by persuasion, but also by a demonstration of determination and preventive and comprehensive actions.

And this is not yet touched on the Chinese topic of covert support for Russia in its aggression against Ukraine, as well as in the sphere of Russian-Chinese cooperation in the development of the Arctic.

And this is no less important than Russian expansion in the Arctic.

China should “make full use of the role of military forces in supporting polar scientific research and other operations.

And in this in the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China there is a complete synergy of efforts. Suffice to mention that 60% of the financing of the LNG production project in Yamal was provided by China.

Ukrainian diplomacy should act preventively and proactively, showing our partners Russia’s true intentions, which, unfortunately, they often are unable to interpret correctly.

Read also: Naval Drones: The Armed Forces of Ukraine are introducing REAL Sanctions Against Russia, by Mykhailo Gonchar

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