Opinion | Putin’s ‘atrocity exhibition’ could turn Ukraine’s nuclear plants into deadly weapons

Russia’s cavalier conduct around Ukrainian nuclear facilities is in keeping with its disregard for the rules of war and basic decency

There are now fears the Kremlin could order the detonation of a nuclear reactor or spent-fuel stores while pinning the blame on Ukraine

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A Russian military convoy travels towards the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, in southeastern Ukraine, on May 1. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, stoking international fears of a catastrophe on the continent. Photo: AP

Published: 3:30am, 16 Aug 2022Updated: 8:32am, 16 Aug 2022

Perhaps Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, would dismiss Russian President Vladimir Putin in the same way that he mocked French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte after his 1815 defeat at the Battle of Waterloo: “Why, he is only a pounder, after all”.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed the Russian military as a blunt instrument – ponderous, reactive and plagued by antiquated command practices and pitiful logistics. Yet, as is by now clear, Russia’s relentless bombardment of Ukrainian military positions has gone hand in hand with an indiscriminate bludgeoning of non-strategic objectives.

This targeting of civilians – with missiles hitting residential buildings, shopping centres, healthcare facilities, including a maternity hospital, and at least one shelter for children, as well as occupying units raping, torturing and systematically killing, as in Bucha – reveals that Putin seeks not only to win. He seeks to demoralise. He seeks to bring the population to its knees and make Ukrainians bewail their foolhardy delusion of making a go of it alone.

Some observers regard this as a novel strategy, with Putin at last showing his true colours. In fact, this has been a long-standing element of Kremlin military doctrine under Putin, which could be characterised as the “atrocity exhibition”.

From the horrific 1999-2000 aerial bombardment of Grozny, in Chechnya, to the near-razing of Aleppo in Syria in 2016 and the devastation of Mariupol and general carnage in Ukraine this year, Putin and the Kremlin have repeatedly appeared willing, even eager, to demonstrate a patent disregard for the rules of war, not to mention the most rudimentary standards of decency.

In this way, Russia performs atrocity as statecraft. Nearly any opportunity to show that Putin is unmoved by civilised conventions is leveraged as a tool that Russia can use to convince its enemies and the world of its callous focus on objectives. Unlike fickle democracies, the Kremlin seems to say, Russia does not blow with the wind. Russia will prevail.

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