The appalling truth: Putin might now fire a tactical nuke – and even get away with it

Article published in The Daily Mail, 3 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Russia is wounded, far more badly than the Kremlin ever believed possible. Ukraine’s extraordinary special forces mission deep inside enemy territory has done vast damage to Putin’s war machine.

There will be retaliation. The Russian president, afraid more than anything of appearing weak, cannot be seen to let such a devastating attack go unanswered.

Since he first ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin has frequently warned he is willing to use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield – often issuing these threats through lackeys in Russia’s state-controlled media.

Now he might well calculate that, by unleashing such a device, he can demonstrate his invincibility and force Ukraine’s surrender. The appalling reality is that such a calculation might be right.

Europe does not have an effective nuclear deterrent. Britain, once the predominant nuclear power of the continent, has shamefully dismantled its own arsenal. We used to have tactical nuclear weapons, with immense blast power but limited radiation yields, which could be dropped from Vulcan bombers.

We also possessed short-range Lance tactical ballistic missiles capable of being armed with atomic warheads. But no longer. Our only nuclear option now is the Doomsday weapon, a strategic missile of cataclysmic power, designed solely for self-defence, to deter an enemy from waging all-out war on Britain.

To use one of these against Russia as punishment for anything they do in Ukraine would be a suicidal escalation. A global holocaust would ensue. And Putin knows we will never provoke that.

The French do have tactical nuclear weapons, which can be delivered by cruise missiles launched from the air. But these also are intended for last-ditch self-defence. Continue reading

Scaring Putin is the only route to a just peace

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 3 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Nobody in their right mind thought Putin would come to the latest round of peace talks in Istanbul with any seriousness. And so it has proven. His demands are straight out of Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko’s negotiating playbook: demand the maximum, present ultimatums and do not give one inch.

Putin’s terms for a final settlement are no different from his diktats from the start, including international recognition of Moscow’s occupation of the four regions he considers Russian territory, and a guarantee Ukraine never joins any international alliances. Even Putin’s pathways to a temporary ceasefire require withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from all of the four regions, demobilisation of the armed forces, cessation of international military aid and electing a new government.

In other words: total capitulation, with Ukraine surrendering its sovereignty, partitioned, isolated, disarmed and a Russian puppet government in Kyiv. That doesn’t mean negotiations shouldn’t continue in the hope of achieving less punitive terms. The Ukrainian government has already signalled it would be ready to accept the temporary occupation of territory Russia has already captured. But it is hard to see how Putin will climb down from his maximalist position without significant changes on the battlefield or to the economic situation.

President Trump tried a softball approach with Putin, extending the prospect of major economic benefits through a return to normalisation in US-Russia relations. Putin hasn’t bought that even though he has ham-fistedly attempted to mollify Trump and encourage him to abandon Ukraine with his disingenuous ploy of engaging in negotiations. Trump obviously sees right through that. He said he was ‘p—-d off’ by Putin’s proposal that Ukraine should be placed under external administration with elections overseen by the UN.

The US now needs to try a different approach. Trump can say he did everything he could to end the bloodshed in the first months of his presidency but Putin’s intransigence now demands different tactics.

What would those tactics be? Continue to hold out an olive branch while doubling down on US military backing to Ukraine and Continue reading

Dropping tactical nuclear weapons was a major strategic error. We must correct it

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 1 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Britain must urgently restore tactical nuclear weapons to its defence arsenal. That thought understandably fills many minds with horror but the logic of strategy means that these weapons would in fact make us safer. If the enemy possesses a devastating capability that we do not he is far more likely to use it on us. And Putin, not to mention China, has vast and growing stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons while we have none. Now it seems the Government may be thinking about tackling this vulnerability in the defence review due to be unveiled this week.

After the Cold War ended Britain dropped tactical nuclear weapons from its inventory. Before that, faced by the conventional superiority of the Warsaw Pact, these bombs had been intended to halt Soviet armoured thrusts into Western Europe if our ground and air forces couldn’t hold them back. They are relatively low yield, including in radiation, and are intended to obliterate major military targets such as troop concentrations, massed tank formations and airbases, rather than laying waste to entire cities and creating wide area nuclear fall-out.

With highly inadequate European conventional forces now confronted by a violent menace, shown only too clearly by the war in Ukraine, we are again back in a situation where Nato nations are faced with the choice of resorting to tactical nuclear weapons or losing everything to Russian advances. Of course our strategic nuclear forces are intended to deter enemy aggression, but their credibility in a situation short of nuclear Armageddon now lies exposed. Is Putin likely to think that our response to his tactical nuclear strikes would be to go to ultimate escalation with a nuclear attack against Moscow or St Petersburg? And if not, what?

The Americans have tactical nukes deployed in Europe but they can withdraw them at any time. And with so much at stake, can we any longer rely absolutely on the US nuclear umbrella to defend us and our Nato allies? Hopefully yes, but optimism is a fool’s strategy. Continue reading

Ignore the Left-wing naysayers, Israel is winning this necessary war

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 30 May 2025. © Richard Kemp

The EU’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, says ‘Israeli strikes in Gaza go beyond what is necessary to fight Hamas’. Perhaps she should head to Jerusalem and give precise instructions to the IDF on what they should be doing to eliminate the Hamas terrorist regime – assuming that’s what she actually wants. She can tell them how you kill terrorists entwined into the population, hiding in tunnels beneath schools, hospitals and houses, protected by the most comprehensively booby-trapped terrain in the history of warfare, all while minimising harm to civilians.

Of course, like so many other blowhard Western politicians, she doesn’t have a clue. Fortunately the IDF does and has been waging this hugely complex war for 19 months with a combination of fighting prowess and humanitarian restraint that no other army could match. That is the true picture that I have witnessed with my own eyes, unlike the vast array of armchair commentators and rabble-rousers with their lies and distortions intended to break Israel or signal their own non-existent virtues or both.

And Israel has had unparalleled success. They have killed something like 20-25,000 Hamas terrorists, including many senior commanders. The latest of these is Mohammed Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, blown apart in an air strike earlier this month as he was skulking in a tunnel beneath a hospital in Khan Younis. His older brother Yahya, from whom he took over the reins of Hamas, met his maker last October. Shortly before that Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military commander, saw the same fate.

The list goes on, and many more would have joined it had the IDF not been so determined to avoid killing the hostages and where possible to avoid harm to civilians in line with their scrupulously observed obligations under International Humanitarian Law. Those who have been dispatched have been replaced, though by less experienced and less able terrorists, but I’m not sure how long the list of applicants will be for the Sinwar brothers’ uniquely hazardous job. Continue reading

International ‘do-gooders’ aren’t helping the people of Gaza

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 19 May 2025. © Richard Kemp

On Friday, President Trump claimed that people in Gaza are ‘starving’ and ‘we’re going to get that taken care of’. Those eager to find a rift in the close relationship between Trump and the Israeli prime minister have leapt all over that comment, desperately trying to portray it as a rebuke to Benjamin Netanyahu. They will be disappointed to learn that Trump’s words in fact refer to a joint plan drawn up by the US and Israel to hasten the destruction of Hamas while feeding the Gazan population.

Two of Israel’s war aims are to destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and prevent it from continuing to govern Gaza. Last week, the IDF began an intensive campaign to finish off the terrorist group. This has been prepared over the past 11 weeks by blocking supplies into Gaza. That has been necessary because until now Hamas has been hijacking food and other aid entering the Strip, stockpiling some for its own use and selling the rest to the population at inflated prices. The proceeds of aid sales have been essential for Hamas to fund its terrorist activities, given that most other sources of income have been cut off.

Israel has come under fire, including from our own Government, for preventing aid from entering. Many have claimed this is a breach of international law, citing Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires essential aid to be allowed into enemy territory. They conveniently ignore the proviso that this need not be done if there are ‘serious reasons for fearing that the consignments may be diverted from their destination’. The IDF is clear that aid has been hijacked and looted by Hamas. Numerous videos and eyewitness reports have shown that same picture.

Hamas’s control of aid distribution is also the most powerful tool it has to retain a stranglehold over the Gaza population. The new US-Israel initiative, co-ordinated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, aims to put a stop to that. The idea is to establish secure aid posts inside the Strip from where those in need would collect food under strict control.

Enter the UN crying foul, predictably joined by a chorus of so-called humanitarian NGOs. You might think those who claim to have the Gazans’ welfare at heart would welcome a plan that gets aid to where it’s needed without impediment from Hamas terrorists. If so, you haven’t been paying attention to what seems to be the real agenda of many of these groups, including UNRWA, the UN Human Rights Council, international courts, and various human rights charities. Their missions apparently focus on twisting the facts on the ground (not to mention international law) into weapons to stick into Israel.

UN officials have said they are worried about the dangers of thousands of people crowding round a limited number of distribution points. Even if valid, does that outweigh their frequently expressed and often overblown concerns about ‘starvation’ and “famine” in Gaza? Some have also voiced doubts over Israel’s allegations that Hamas has been stealing aid, despite the overwhelming weight of evidence proving otherwise.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that António Guterres and others inside the UN simply do not want Israel to continue with its defeat of Hamas terrorists in Gaza. They have previous form on this. Right at the beginning of the conflict, I’m told, the Israeli government appealed to the UN to set up a humanitarian zone in the south of Gaza to house refugees driven away from danger in active combat zones further north. The UN refused to do so, arguing they would be abetting the displacement of civilians.

I know of no other conflict in which the UN has not actively encouraged the removal of populations from a dangerous combat zone. The same applies to the failure of the UN or any major power to pressure Egypt into opening its borders to allow temporary refuge. Again, there have been few other conflicts worldwide where neighbouring countries have not opened their borders to let civilians escape to safety.

Hamas is well known for using human shields as a crucial element of its military strategy against Israel. Can it really be that the UN and others in the international community are also using Gazan civilians as a different kind of shield?

Refusing to co-operate in proposals to get civilians to safety so that Hamas terrorists can be killed while minimising the prospects of collateral damage, and rejecting an initiative to supply them with humanitarian aid while denying it to the terrorists, certainly help frustrate Israel’s war efforts.

These international do-gooders may be doing good to Hamas, but they aren’t doing any good to the civilian population of Gaza. After more than 18 months of vicious fighting, the best way to end this war and get the hostages out is the rapid and efficient defeat of Hamas, and that depends to a very large extent on the success of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s food-distribution project. All responsible governments and humanitarian bodies have a duty to support it. Those who do not are exposing their concerns for Gaza as empty words. Or worse.

Even if Trump’s ceasefire holds, it will not end the conflict over Kashmir

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2025. © Richard Kemp

US diplomacy has potentially brought India and Pakistan back from the brink of what could easily have turned into a much wider and more violent conflict. For the time being at least – the ceasefire over the weekend, if it holds, is due to be followed up by more substantive negotiations.

On Saturday morning, a couple of hours before Pakistan’s air force launched missiles at Indian military bases, lieutenant general Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the army spokesman, accused India of ‘pushing the whole region towards a dangerous war with its madness’.

In fact it is Pakistan’s madness that is responsible for the most ferocious conflict between the two countries since the war in 1971. India’s air strikes against terrorists were an entirely justified response to the April 22 slaughter of 26 civilians in Pahalgam, the most deadly attack on Indian civilians since the 2008 bomb and gun attacks in Mumbai.

Indian intelligence has linked the Pahalgam shootings to Lashkar-e-Taiba, an internationally proscribed terrorist group. LeT’s primary focus is on violently separating Kashmir from India to use as a base for the eventual conquest of India in order to force Islamic rule on the subcontinent, destroying Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity. It also has strong connections with Al Qaeda and has been implicated in global terrorist attacks including in the UK, US and the Middle East. LeT is a proxy of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency which funds and directs it.

Of course Pakistan denies that, claiming only to provide moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmiri separatists. But some years ago, when working in British intelligence, I saw numerous reports confirming the ISI’s direct role with LeT and other jihadist groups, and the situation won’t have changed since then. Furthermore, Pakistan’s extensive use of a range of terrorist organisations as instruments of state policy is widely understood and has been admitted by Pakistani leaders. Continue reading

Biden’s attempt to rewrite history is fooling no one

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 7 May 2025. © Richard Kemp

In his first interview since leaving the White House, Joe Biden accused President Trump of appeasing Russia over Ukraine. Well, Biden certainly knows all about appeasement. It was the hallmark of his presidency and accounts for much of the instability in Europe and the Middle East today.

Before Putin invaded, Biden sent the worst possible signal, seeming to suggest that a ‘minor incursion’ might not be too big a deal. Then when the tanks rolled in he offered to evacuate the leader of the embattled country to safety. That would have been like Roosevelt flying Churchill out of Britain in 1940.

Zelensky’s response was: ‘The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.’ He got some of the ammunition but never enough, despite Biden’s claim in this interview that he had given Ukraine ‘everything they needed to provide for their independence’.

In reality his administration gave Ukraine just enough to enable them to defend against Russia but far from sufficient to achieve much more than prolonging the bloodbath. Biden may have treated Zelensky nicely in the White House but every plea for battle-winning weapons was met by months of procrastination and delay. That included tanks, ATACMS long-range missiles and F16 combat planes, all of which, if delivered rapidly and in sufficient quantities, could have turned the tide.

Furthermore, every offensive weapon that was provided was grudgingly handed over with the caveat that it couldn’t be used against targets on Russian soil, a restriction only partially eased late last year.

With Putin launching assault after assault from his side of the border, that really did force Ukraine to fight with one hand tied behind its back. And it was all down to appeasement and fear in the White House in the face of never-ending bombast from the Kremlin.

Biden rejected Trump’s attacks on European Nato members freeloading on the US, fantastically claiming that ‘it saves us money Continue reading

If Trump is determined to force through a peace where Biden was not, he can do it

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 2 May 2025. © Richard Kemp

President Trump hoped to achieve a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine by almost reversing the Biden position in this war. That is, by being tough on Ukraine while taking a more conciliatory tone with Russia. He aspired also to achieve improved long-term relations with Moscow in America’s interests.

The US put forward a ceasefire proposal which Kyiv accepted, despite indications of serious disadvantages to itself in potential negotiations. Russia rejected it. In recent days Trump has become increasingly frustrated with Putin’s position, apparently understanding that he has been strung along. Now he has pulled out of a formal mediation role in the conflict. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US is changing ‘the methodology of how we contribute’, no longer playing the role of intermediary. This is a major policy change for the US and it remains to be seen exactly what role it will take up.

One indication of the future ‘methodology’ is the economic cooperation deal just signed between America and Ukraine, involving significant US investment in minerals. That includes provision of military aid in exchange for access to natural resources. Accompanying this, Trump has approved his administration’s first fifty million dollars of arms exports to Ukraine. This is exactly what Putin did not want. It has been his priority to prevent the continuing Western supply of munitions to Ukraine which has been one of his main conditions in considering what was proposed as an unconditional ceasefire.

It does seem probable that Putin actually wants a negotiated end to the war given his country’s desperate economic situation – which can only get worse while the fighting continues. His apparent intransigence in responding to Trump’s ceasefire proposals is likely to represent a push for acceptance of his maximalist terms which involve much more than just freezing the conflict on current lines. Putin wants greater territorial gains as well as demilitarisation and regime change in Ukraine. By angering Trump in the way he has, Putin may have miscalculated. Not only has the new minerals deal given the US an increased economic interest in the future of Ukraine, but Trump has also said if Putin doesn’t accede to his peace proposal, he will flood Ukraine with arms.

Whether that actually happens we shall have to see. It would represent a major volte-face from the line Trump has taken on this war since the beginning. Nothing new there! The extent of arms supply would have to be enormous to have a significant effect on the ground, and accompanied also by a step-change in intelligence sharing as well as much more open-ended authority to use US-supplied weaponry against targets on Russian territory. Failure by the Biden administration to get close to the actual need in these areas led us to the current situation where Russia retains the upper hand on the battleground. A substantial boost to Ukraine’s hardware capabilities, no matter how great, is unlikely to be enough at this stage, given the country’s dire shortage of fighting troops. But if Trump’s threat begins to be operationalised it might push Putin further towards accepting a ceasefire.

A complementary, and probably even more effective tactic would be to turn the screws on the Russian economy in a way Biden did not do over three years of war. Republican Senator Lindsay Graham has put forward legislation to apply 500 percent sanctions on any country that buys Russian oil, gas and aluminium as well as imposing much more extensive sanctions. His proposal has so far gathered substantial bipartisan support in the US legislature.

There is no doubt about Trump’s determination to end the war. His use of the carrot so far has led only to frustration. How hard he is prepared to wield the stick – both in military support and economic action – is going to determine how quickly some kind of peace can be achieved.

Zelensky’s meeting in Rome may show a ceasefire is at hand, but this is no victory

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 26 April 2025. © Richard Kemp

The death of Pope Francis brought Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky together face to face for the first time since their abortive meeting in the Oval Office in February. Both sides described their 15-minute discussion as productive, with Zelensky hailing it as potentially ‘historic’.

The French president Emmanuel Macron appeared to try to muscle in on the meeting but was sharply waved off by Trump. Perhaps no bad thing, as it is understood that the Europeans were involved in preparing Zelensky for the White House meeting that went so badly wrong.

Putin did not attend the funeral. He had met Francis three times in the years before he invaded Ukraine, but rejected the Pope’s offers to travel to Moscow since the conflict began. During the Second World War, one of Putin’s predecessors, Joseph Stalin, famously asked ‘How many divisions does the Pope have?’ It’s said that when Stalin’s wit reached the Vatican, Pius XII responded, ‘You can tell my son Joseph that he will meet my divisions in heaven.’

For Zelensky’s comments on his meeting with Trump to be even partially right, we may assume that Pope Francis’s celestial divisions intervened in Rome. On X, Zelensky wrote: ‘Good meeting. We discussed a lot one on one. Hoping for results on everything we covered. Protecting lives of our people. Full and unconditional ceasefire. Reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out.’

Following a meeting between the US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin the previous day, Trump had said: ‘A good day in talks and meetings with Russia and Ukraine. They are very close to a deal, and the two sides should now meet, at very high levels, to “finish it off” … most major points are agreed to.’

If this also is right (we have heard such comments before), we may be at the closest point to achieving a full ceasefire in this war than at Continue reading

Putin’s truce shows that stick is better than carrot with him

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 19 April 2025. © Richard Kemp

Did Putin just blink first on Ukraine? Since taking office in January, Donald Trump has been demanding an end to hostilities. The US president proposed a full ceasefire which Ukraine accepted but Russia rejected, conditioning it on a halt in Ukraine’s mobilisation efforts and Western arms supplies.

Following complex negotiations between Washington and Moscow, on Friday the Americans indicated their frustrations, with both Trump and Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, threatening to walk away from brokering peace unless there were signs of progress in the coming days.

That must have rattled Putin because the next day, today, he announced a unilateral Easter truce.

This is a clear ploy to keep Trump’s attention and allow him to characteristically declare some kind of negotiating victory. Although Putin will not submit to any of Ukraine’s demands, in particular that of giving up the territory he has seized, he does want this war to end – for the time being at least.

The Russian economy is in dire straits and Moscow needs a lengthy pause in hostilities to begin to rebuild it. What is more, Russia can ill-afford the stronger sanctions that are currently under discussion between the US and European countries, with further talks expected on that in London next week.

Putin is also fearful of Trump. He knows well that Trump’s cajoling of Ukraine and what has appeared to some to be cosying up to Russia, are in fact merely negotiating tactics.

He also knows that the unpredictable figure in the White House is more than capable of turning on a dime – in any direction, and in a way that could be extremely damaging for Russia. From a wider perspective, Putin has recently lost significant influence in the Middle East with the fall of Assad’s regime in Syria. Putin can ill Continue reading