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The Kremlin plans to launch a propaganda campaign to resurrect concerns in the US about the dangers of a “nuclear winter” in an effort to instill fear and reduce support for aid to Ukraine, according to Estonia’s annual Foreign Intelligence service report released Wednesday.
The report said that Russia hopes to recruit American scientists this year to spread warnings about nuclear winter, a contested theory that predicts a nuclear conflict would produce catastrophic global cooling and famine.
Moscow’s policymakers and experts have debated for months why the Kremlin’s nuclear saber-rattling has yet to have the desired effect. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made frequent nuclear threats from the podium during the Ukraine war, but an attempt to sow fear directly among the US public by amplifying nuclear winter concerns would represent a stepped-up approach.
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Scientists in the 1980s believed a nuclear conflict would lead to a scenario where dust and smoke would cause global temperatures to plummet by as much as 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Later research has suggested the effects would be less cataclysmic than Cold War estimates, although impacts could still be severe.
The Kremlin is mobilizing popular Russian figures such as Vladimir Pozner, a television personality who became famous for presenting the Soviet Union’s views to the West during the Cold War. According to Estonia’s report, Pozner has said he is willing to do a similar series of televised debates with the US, focusing on the threat of a nuclear winter scenario.
The campaign is expected to use “YouTube, podcasts and carefully selected spokespersons with authoritative and ‘palatable’ viewpoints” to draw attention to the outcome of a possible nuclear conflict, the report said.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s KGB tried to use the threat of nuclear winter to convince the West that their nuclear arsenals should be reduced, according to a declassified CIA study.