The Defense Ministry says Chechen rebels are planning attacks on Russian nuclear sites. A popular newspaper advocates using chemical and biological weapons against Chechnya. A prominent Duma deputy takes things a step further, saying Russia should use nuclear arms "that would leave 300-meter craters."
Is Russia's second Chechen war this decade going nuclear?
In all likelihood, no. Nevertheless, there certainly has been a lot of discussion about the possibility lately.
The Defense Ministry said Tuesday that Chechen rebel leader Salman Raduyev was planning terrorist attacks inside Russia - perhaps on nuclear targets. Raduyev responded that he was indeed planning terrorist attacks, but not on nuclear facilities. "The consequences of this cannot be predicted," Interfax quoted him as saying.
Last month, after a series of bomb blasts killed nearly 300 people, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published a front-page article advocating the use of chemical and biological weapons:
"It is necessary to put the question before Chechnya - either they cease all military activity on Russian territory or face the physical destruction of the whole republic with air raids, bacterial weapons, psychotropic nerve gas, napalm, everything that our once-strong army has at its disposal."
This week, the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty ran a story under the headline: "Will an atom bomb be dropped on the terrorists?"
"Military specialists do not exclude that a nuclear attack could be carried out against the bases of international terrorists in Chechnya," the newspaper said. "Of course, it won't be an atomic bomb of the force that the Americans dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
"Right now, the idea of using nuclear weapons against Chechen bandits seems mindless," the article continued. "But if frightening terrorist acts continue and become more and more common? And particularly if the [Chechen] militants themselves, let's say in Moscow, detonate a nuclear bomb?"
The issue is not confined to the media - it is also being discussed by members of the State Duma, parliament's lower house. "I think nuclear weapons should stop being virtual," said Alexei Mitrofanov, a member of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's nationalist party and chair of the Duma's geopolitics committee.
"We are not talking about powerful bombs, but rather low-yield explosives that would leave craters with a diameter of 300 meters, but would not cause radiation to creep into our territory," Mitrofanov said. Ivan Safranchuk, a nuclear-weapons expert with the PIR Center, said that it would not be possible to contain the fallout from a nuclear attack against Chechnya.
While nobody seriously expects nuclear weapons to be used in Chechnya, the fact that such options are being discussed is indicative of an angry and helpless mood in society.
Recent polls say that 2 to 3 percent of Russians favor using nuclear weapons against Chechnya, said Yury Levada, director of the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research, or VTsIOM.
"There is a very angry mood among the population. Talking about using nuclear weapons is just a symbolic way of expressing this anger," he said.
Staff writers Sarah Karush and Simon Saradzhyan contributed to this report.
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