Kremlin propaganda: threatening the West with "nuclear winter"

The Kremlin plans to halt US aid to Ukraine by using a propaganda campaign about the threat of a "nuclear winter" to instil fear in the people.

What is nuclear winter?

Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons since the start of the war in Ukraine, but Western support for Kyiv has remained firm.

However, according to the annual report of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service, the Kremlin's drive to weaken this support is not over. 

Propaganda threatening a nuclear winter scenario may soon be launched.

Nuclear winter is the theory that the smoke from thousands of fires caused by nuclear explosions would block out the sun and cause the world's temperature to drop below zero.

The freezing cold and land contaminated with radioactive waste would wreck agriculture. This would kill far more people than the original nuclear attack.

Kremlin campaign planned

Moscow is reportedly considering using popular Russian figures to spread propaganda. For example, Vladimir Pozner, a TV presenter who was famous during the Cold War for spreading the Soviet Union's message to the West.

A report from Estonia says Pozner is ready to resume a similar role, focusing on the threat of nuclear winter.

The Kremlin's campaign is expected to use YouTube, podcasts and carefully selected authoritative and "acceptable" spokespersons to highlight the consequences of any possible nuclear exchange, the report adds.

The threat of nuclear war stopped the Cold War

The world became aware of nuclear winter in the 1970s thanks to the work of scientists, including Brian Toon, Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado, USA.

His and his colleagues' findings, supported by a group of Soviet scientists, helped convince Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan to reduce the number of warheads in 1986.

"Both Gorbachev and Reagan said that they had been told by their scientific communities that if a nuclear war broke out, it was the most likely thing to kill everyone on the planet," Professor Toon said last year.

B. B. Toon's 2018 TED talk "35 years of research on nuclear war - you should be worried" currently has more than nine million views on YouTube.