A Kremlin propagandist has suggested that plywood replicas of Washington, D.C. and London should be built in Russia’s Arctic and then bombed to show the nation’s nuclear weapons capabilities.
The idea was floated on the Russia 1 channel program hosted by Vladimir Solovyov, where guests make frequent nuclear threats against Western countries which support Ukraine against Moscow’s aggression.
Since the start of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has veered between touting Russia’s nuclear weapons capabilities to stating that Moscow had no intention of using them.
Russian state TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov. A guest on his program suggested Russia bomb replica versions of Washington and London to show off Moscow’s nuclear capabilities.
OLGA MALTSEVA/Getty Images
Amid this ambiguity, guests and hosts on Russian state television have regularly issued threats about Moscow’s missiles and while they do not necessarily represent Kremlin thinking, they add to a narrative of anti-Western invective.
Alexander Mikhailov, director of the Bureau of Political Military Analysis, a Moscow think tank, gave an imaginative take on how to show off Russia’s nuclear prowess.
He said Russia’s nuclear testing ground on its Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya would be the ideal location for a replica London and Washington, D.C., complete with fake versions of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the White House.
Russian propaganda suggests building a mock-up of London and New York (other large cities well) at the nuclear test site at Novaya Zemlya (Arkhangelsk region of Russia) and hit them with nuclear weapons.
I don’t really know if it’s treatable. pic.twitter.com/HHJ6qEP59z
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) September 15, 2024
In his view, Russia should hold tests using at least one Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM)—a weapon which was first deployed in 2019 on the new Borei class of ballistic missile nuclear submarines.
Mikhailov said this could fly from the Atlantic toward Novaya Zemlya and hit the fake London and Washington with 150 kilotons of TNT.
“Then three billion YouTube users can see what the destruction of the capital cities of Britain and the U.S. looks like with just one of the 10 warheads on each Bulava missile,” he said in the clip posted on X by Ukrainian internal affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko which has gone viral.
“Let them count how many warheads will be enough for every megalopolis in the collective West,” he said before the anchor weighed in with a question about logistics.
“What if we don’t manage to build the cities of London and Washington in time,” said Solovyov. Mikhailov replied that the “thousands of immigrants who don’t want to die for our country will erect it from plywood,” he said, “all of it will go up in flames and it will burn so beautifully that it will horrify the world.”
Some social media users mocked his suggestion as far-fetched, but it follows a call by State Duma deputy Andrei Kolesnik on September 14 to detonate a nuclear weapon inside Russia to remind the world of its capabilities.
Last week, Solovyov an ally of Putin, said that the Russian president already has a “basis to start a nuclear war” based on the country’s current nuclear doctrine, following Ukraine’s counteroffensive into Kursk.
