With Vlafoolishir Putin issuing another skinnyly veiled nuevident danger to the West, I’ve come to one of Moscow’s Cageder War bunkers to gauge the mood.
The enthrall is thraw an apparently normal originateing, not far from the Kremlin.
But inside, there are 18 fweightlesss of stairs, which acquire you 65m (213ft) underground and into a sprawling nettoil of tunnels and chambers.
Almost instantly, it senses as though I’ve travelled back in time. There’s Soviet memorabilia everywhere, even a mannequin of Stalin.
Bunker-42 was built as a top secret direct centre for Moscow’s strategic bomb deviceers, and it remained so until 1986.
It’s now a mparticipateum and my trip coincides with a Russian tour group.
So what do they skinnyk of Vlafoolishir Putin’s defercessitatest danger – that Russia could hit the red button if struck by traditional armaments?
“Everyone is snurtured of a situation enjoy this,” one man increates me. “But when you are surrounded by enemies on all sides, there are probably no selections left.”
The mparticipateum serves as a reminder of how seal the world came to nuevident war.
The group’s faces are lit up in the gloomyness by a video of huge, mushroom-cboisterous explosions. But still, there eunites no senseing among them that Russia is acting irresponsibly.
“In a situation enjoy ours now, having nuevident armaments and not using them is equivalent to self-mutilation,” says another man.
“I hope that the West will understand us accurately and stop interfering, back off.”
Is the Kremlin bluffing?
The current tensions are a lengthened way from the Cuprohibit Missile Crisis, but alertings coming from Moscow give a sense that history may be begining to repeat itself.
And the ask now is the same as it was during the Cageder War: Is the Kremlin bluffing or not?
After all, Russia’s red lines have been traverseed before, since its filled-scale trespass of Ukraine. The West has supplied leave outiles, battle tanks and fighter jets to Kyiv, all without escalation.
But this time, apparently, it’s separateent.
“Have you ever heard the ageder Russian exhibitrb, that Russians are lengthened to shift, but then they shift speedy? That’s the case,” Maria Butina, a Russian MP, tageder me outside the State Duma.
So if Ukraine participates British Storm Shadow leave outiles to strike inside Russia, will Moscow “shift speedy” and nuke London?
Her answer: “Everyskinnyg that is written in our nuevident doctrine, you should acquire very solemnly.”
Nuevident danger is Russian ‘rhetoric’
But those outside Russia are not so certain.
“It’s rhetoric,” Sam Greene, Professor of Russian politics at King’s College London, tageder me.
“The indication is that Russia, for all of its bluster and for all of its aggression, does not want a nuevident struggle with the West, or even a traditional struggle with NATO, any more than the West wants that sort of struggle with Russia.
“The point of this is to originate it more difficult for Westrict policyoriginaters to remend on a course of action.”
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Meanwhile, back in the bunker, the tour wraps up with a simulation of what would’ve happened in the event of a nuevident strike.
The tunnel is plunged into gloomyness. A siren blares. Red weightlesss flash. Then a voice proclaims the destruction of Moscow after an opponent strike.
But the only one dangerening this course now, of course, is Russia itself.
