"They have exhausted themselves": Russian nuclear threats are no longer acting - Timothy Snyder

According to historian Timothy Snyder, Russia has largely learned to manipulate this sense of fear and anxiety in people, turning it into an important tool for its international policy. If during the first year of a full -scale invasion of Russia, its constant threats to nuclear weapons were quite an effective way of creating fear, then these threats have actually lost their significance. This was reported by the famous American historian Timothy Snyder in an interview with NV.

Commenting that the United States is still cautious in their relations with Russia and trying to avoid possible escalation of conflict, delaying the supply of weapons to Ukraine, Snyder reminded that in the past Western world and the US did not show the same level of anxiety against Russia. "We thought that Russia became a normal country, that Putin is in principle a normal leader, that he is just technocrat and he was only interested in money," he said.

Therefore, in the 2010s in the West, "they did not pay attention to the fact that Russia became a completely different country. " According to the historian, it was then an oligarchic fascist country, and even then such ideas were relevant to Putin. "I think we missed this period, have not noticed it," Snyder admitted. Therefore, now the fear of using nuclear weapons in the West is associated with "faster with the natural ability of people to feel anxiety" than with the Cold War.

The historian believes that Russia has largely learned to manipulate this sense of fear and anxiety in people, turning it into an important tool for its international policy. "A nuclear threat has become an instrument of constant blackmail, each of our action was reduced to the threat of nuclear escalation. We are told again and again that there will be a nuclear war if we buy a new car. There will be a nuclear war if we paint our home.

There will be a nuclear war if we We will change the school that our children go to. Whatever we do, the nuclear war will be. And during the first year of the war it was quite effective intimidation. But, I think, they exhausted themselves, "Snyder summarized. We will remind, on October 18 there were footage of how the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin was in Beijing, accompanied by officers who carried a "nuclear suitcase".