Putin hires hardline professor who suggested nuking Europe to 'test NATO's resolve' for Kremlin role 'deterring the West'

Vladimir Putin has re-hired a former adviser who previously called for Russia to carry out a preemptive nuclear strike against Europe to 'test NATO's resolve'.

Professor Sergei Karaganov, a political scientists who has been hired by the Kremlin to study how to 'deter the West', said in the past that such an attack on Europe would be the best way of saving the world from a full-blown war.

In addition to Putin, the 71-year-old was also a presidential adviser to his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, and is seen as being a hugely influential Russian foreign policy expert.

He is linked to several pervasive ideas in Russian foreign policy such as the so-called Karaganov doctrine - on the rights of ethnic Russians living abroad, and the Putin Doctrine - the support of authoritarian regimes while undermining democracies.

He has also been a staunch supporter of Putin's invasion of Ukraine from the beginning, having helped formulate a number of the key ideas that led to it in 2022.

What's more, he has also promoted the idea of a 'Greater Eurasia' and defended closer ties with China, while arguing the era of Western dominance has ended.

Putin, he has argued, is right to free the world from the 'western yoke'.

Despite this, in an essay last year for a Russian foreign policy website, Karaganov called for the use of nuclear weapons to smash 'the will of the West'.

He made the extraordinary claim that use of such weapons against the West can 'save humanity' from the radioactive ruins of full-scale atomic Armageddon.

He expressed scepticism that the United States would come to the defence of Europe in such an event, saying only a 'madman' in the White House would sacrifice Boston for Poznan - Poland's fifth largest city. 'Both the US and Europe understand this perfectly well, though they prefer not to think about it,' he wrote.

In order to 'to arouse the instinct of self-preservation that the West has lost,' he argued, Russia 'will have to make nuclear deterrence a convincing argument again by lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons set unacceptably high, and by rapidly but prudently moving up the deterrence-escalation ladder.'

Furthermore, he has said a Russian victory in Ukraine can only be achieved if the West was forced to 'retreat strategically, or even surrender'.

He warned that leaders in China would be unlikely to support a preemptive strike on Europe, but said Beijing would 'rejoice at heart that a powerful blow has been dealt to the reputation and position of the United States'.

'Morally, this is a terrible choice as we will use God's weapon, thus dooming ourselves to grave spiritual losses. But if we do not do this, not only Russia can die, but most likely the entire human civilization will cease to exist,' he said. 

Now, Karaganov - a senior academic at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow - is understood to have been hired by the Kremlin once more.

He will carry out further research into foreign police for Moscow's rulers, with an investigation by Russian opposition news site Meduza finding that he has been commissioned to carry out eight studies by Putin's office and the government.

While the cost to the Russian taxpayer is unclear, a source inside the university told Meduza it was 'no less than ten million rubles' (around £850,000).

Meduza reported that the topics he has been commissioned to research include:  'the theory and practice of nuclear deterrence in current conditions with relation to Russian politics' and 'a dialogue on developing a new concept of nuclear deterrence in the quadrilateral Russia-China-India-Pakistan format'.

A source told the Russian publication that the professor would not manage the projects on his own, and speculated the job may be symbolic.

'There's a feeling at the university that they're making sure certain people are 'well fed'.' the source told Meduza. 

Karaganov has in the past said he wants Putin's regime to increase its nuclear rhetoric, which has already sent chills down many spines in the West.

However, if this does not deter the West from supplying weapons to Ukraine, nuclear strikes should be unleashed, he wrote in his essay last year.

People should be warned of 'the need to leave their places of residence near objects that could become targets of nuclear strikes in countries that provide direct support to the Kyiv regime'.

'The enemy must know that we are ready to strike a preemptive retaliatory strike for all of his current and past aggressions in order to prevent a slide into a global thermonuclear war,' he wrote, and claimed the West has lost the Cold War 'fear of hell' or 'Armageddon' that exists in a full scale nuclear war.

He advocates using presumably tactical nuclear weapons on initially a limited scale to force Western populations to demand their leaders back down in support for Ukraine by scaring the world over use of such weapons to annihilate the planet.

'The fear of nuclear escalation must be restored. Otherwise humanity is doomed,' said the professor, who is also an Honorary Chairman of the Russian Presidium of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy.

'But what if they don't back down [and if the West has] completely lost your sense of self-preservation?

'Then [Russia] will have to hit a group of targets in a number of countries in order to bring those who have lost their minds to their senses.

'This is a morally terrible choice - we use the weapons of God, dooming ourselves to severe spiritual losses.

'But if this is not done, not only Russia may perish, but, most likely, the entire human civilisation will end. We will have to make this choice.'

Separately, he wrote in an article for Profile magazine: 'In the end, the winners are not judged. And the saviours are thanked.'

Karaganov admits in his chilling analysis that Putin's bloodbath war has so far failed to yoke Kyiv - and is costing untold lives of Russians and Ukrainians.

'We can fight for another year or two or three, sacrificing thousands and thousands of our best men and grinding tens and hundreds of thousands of people who fell into a tragic historical trap of the inhabitants of the territory that is now called Ukraine,' he wrote.

'This military operation cannot end with a decisive victory without imposing a strategic retreat or even capitulation on the West. We must force the West to give up trying to turn back history, give up its attempts at global dominance and force it to take care of itself, digesting its current multi-level crisis.'

His analysis mirrors the ranting of pro-Putin TV propagandists.

Yet he is seen as a Moscow academic giant who is close to the dictator and a key map-maker of Russian foreign strategy, and now has Putin's ear directly.

Karaganov is a founder of the Kremlin president's cherished Valdai Club and also holds the position of Academic Supervisor of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at the Russian Higher School of Economics.

Ignoring that Putin began the war in Ukraine, he said: 'By breaking the West's will to aggression, we will not only save ourselves, finally liberate the world from the Western yoke that has lasted five centuries, but we will also save all of humanity.'

He is an architect of the strategy that led Putin to invade Ukraine.

He once insisted: 'Russia is genetically an authoritarian power. 

'Russia's authoritarianism was not imposed from above but is the result of our history which has formed our genetic code.'

The fear of Russian nuclear weapons has heightened since the invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow has the world's largest stockpile of such weapons - an estimated stockpile of 5,580 warheads - even more than the United States.

To remind the West of this, Putin took a test flight in a revamped Tu-160M nuclear-capable strategic bomber earlier this year, which he described as 'excellent'.

What's more, an investigation by the Financial Times found that Russia's threshold for using nuclear weapons is lower than it states publicly.

Scenarios in which it would consider using the devastating weapons includes enemy troops entering Russian territory or the defeat of Russian border troops.