The expanded meeting of the Russian Security Council poses no new threat as Russia is already operating at their capability limit.
That’s according to Oleksandr Khara, a Ukrainian diplomat, expert on foreign and security policy at the Center for Defense Strategies, who spoke in a comment to Radio NV.
The main goal of the event is to exert propaganda pressure on the domestic audience, try to intimidate Ukraine and the West, as well as to create the illusion of possible nuclear blackmail, which is actually limited and increasingly less effective.
“Nothing will change radically (after the meeting of the Security Council, – ed.) as Russia is unable to ramp up terror they are already committing against us. They are doing this to the maximum… So we should keep calm as they can’t physically do anything more than they are already doing,” the diplomat said.
He also expressed confidence that convening an expanded Security Council makes no sense “because it’s in fact only Putin and a few of his henchmen who lead this war”.
According to Hara, the main task of the meeting will claim assert to the domestic audience that the Kremlin will “respond harshly” to attacks on Russia’s military infrastructure, which they refer to as “terrorist acts” despite them being absolutely legitimate from the international law perspective.
“Another task that the Russians are pursuing is an attempt to scare us,” the expert suggested, noting that “You can’t scare us with the Security Council – they have been trying to do it for three years with both missile and drone attacks.”
“The third target audience is the rest of the world, and first of all, of course, the United States. They (the Russians, – ed.) will pose as those who can escalate things,” he suggested.
Commenting on the repeated warnings from Ukraine’s Western partners that Russia may resort to such an escalation previously unseen, Khara noted that over the past three years, the Russians have employed all weapons at their disposal, except for nuclear arms.
“Actually, I think we will definitely hear subtle hints regarding nuclear weapons in the speech of the Russian Fuhrer and his henchmen, because their main task is to scare us, to divide the USA and Europe, to show that the Russian Federation cannot be stopped, that Ukraine and the West have lost this war so Ukraine must agree to all these absolutely absurd demands that we first heard in 2022, and now in Istanbul,” the expert noted.
He concluded that “truly brilliant special operations executed by Ukraine reduce Russia’s capabilities for nuclear blackmail of Ukraine and the world”.
As reported by Russian media, the head of the aggressor state, Vladimir Putin, is convening an expanded meeting of the Russian Security Council for later this week.
Source: Expert: Russia’s “Security Council” intimidation attempt, not escalation threat
