EDITORIAL | Russia must be swayed from instigating Armageddon

Not since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis has the world come so close to a nuclear Armageddon.

These chilling words last week came from US President Joe Biden as global fears mount that Russia, as it rapidly loses its bid to take over Ukraine, will launch nuclear missiles in response to recent embarrassing losses its military sustained on the battlefield.

Biden’s warning comes just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the annexure of four Ukrainian provinces and warned any attempt to reclaim them would be considered a direct attack on Russia.

Putin, in the past few weeks, seems to have become increasingly vulnerable as his military loses vast swathes of Ukrainian territory which, just weeks ago, it convincingly controlled.

A “partial mobilisation” to replenish dwindling troop numbers, which was announced by Putin last month, has gone horribly wrong for him. Nearly 200,000 Russian men have fled their homeland to escape the draft.

This has resulted in Putin and his close supporters increasingly and loudly clanging their nuclear missile launch drums.

That clanging is something every country, including SA, should be taking seriously.

Last week Ukrainian state nuclear company Energoatom announced Russian forces had kidnapped Ihor Murashov, director-general of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.

The kidnapping came a week after four explosions on the Nord Stream Gas pipeline between Russia and Germany.

Unlike the economies of the West, it will be those of the world’s poorest, including that of South Africa, which will be battered into potential oblivion.

The explosions, widely believed to have been carried out by Russia and which shut down the pipeline, released what is thought to be the world’s largest known methane gas leak into the atmosphere.

The powerful greenhouse gas emission leak will do unprecedented long term damage to the fight against global warming.

These pipeline attacks, kidnapping, and now Russia’s nuclear sabre rattling are signs at how far an increasingly under pressure Putin is prepared to go.

Everyone, including Russia’s allies, need to find ways to quickly de-escalate a rapidly worsening situation.

Unlike the US and Europe, which Putin has decried as evil over their support of Ukraine, SA, as a strategic Brics partner, like India, China and Brazil, for now has Putin’s ear.

A nuclear strike, which Biden has said will see the US entering the conflict, will have catastrophic effect on an already shaky global economy.

Unlike Western economies, it will be those of the world’s poorest, including SA, which will be battered into potential oblivion.

Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports, used for the shipping of grain to some of the world’s poorest nations, hit Africa and the poorest of the poor the hardest.

As with the port blockades, a nuclear strike, tactical or not, will do untold damage to the poor.

Radiation fallout from nuclear missiles, tactical or not, will wreck catastrophic damage on poor nations food supplies.

Economies, especially of poor nations including SA, where the unemployment rate is nearly 34%, will be decimated, with people’s measly savings in jeopardy.

It is now more than ever that common sense must prevail.

Nations like SA must join forces with countries such as Turkey, which because of its geopolitical position, have availed themselves to help with potential peace talks.

With Putin’s allies rapidly shrinking in number, it is now more urgent than ever that SA whispers loudly into his ear that the time to off-ramp the nuclear war highway is now.

If the exit is not taken, the repercussions for millions including South Africans will be catastrophic.