Instead, the professor of Law, Policing and Justice said he thinks the bigger threat comes from Pakistan – a “far less stable country” where it’s unclear who’s in charge.
Prof Strawson told the Mirror: “I wouldn’t say Putin is looking for a nuclear conflict but the longer we go the more likely we are to have a nuclear conflict at some point and we are lucky not to have had one since 1945.”
“But Russia is a lot more cautious than Pakistan. I would predict it is more likely that Pakistan would use a nuclear bomb as it is a far less stable country.
“Russia is a centralised country but Pakistan is unstable, we don’t know who is running it, it is not very clear. Their position with the Taliban was not very clear.
“With Russia they know that a nuclear war would be devastating for everyone on both sides and so the situation is more rational with forces avoiding the situation getting out of control.”
Prof Strawson also noted Putin’s strong position in Russia, adding: “Putin has shown himself able to recover from the shock of not overthrowing Ukraine straight away, he immediately recovered, saw off the Wagner threat and so in that sense he is clearly acting rationally. He has his own peculiar style and is very security conscious, he plays games with political elite,” he explained.
“His speech on February 24 was very clear his picture of the world and his play book.”
Prof Anthony Glees from the University of Buckingham agrees that Putin probably doesn’t want to start a nuclear war. However, both experts agree that the Russian leader does have big plans to grow his country’s land beyond Ukraine.
“So in my opinion, Putin’s conventional war against us and against NATO which is his policy, stated time and time again, of reconstituting the strategic and geopolitical entity that was the Soviet Union before 1989, has already started, indeed it has been underway in the UK for some time,” he said.
He further warned: “Once the Russians feel that we have been sufficiently softened up (and it’s not just us, they’ll also prey on Germany and France in particular) Putin will tighten the screws even more.
He will repeat his demands and begin with military incursions and even assassinations. We should not forget what he did to Yushchencko. He’s poisoned and killed for far too many years, as the good people of Salisbury have learned to their cost.”
“He will also try to use cyber to take down our critical national infrastructure, either using the GRU or his chums in Russia from whom he maintains a certain distance, just in case we decide to take a chunk of his critical infrastructure. We don’t want to however because we are anxious about poking a stick into the wasps’ nest that is Russia.”
He also said: “Ballistic missiles? No siree, not if they are not necessary. I think he will try to do with conventional, non-nuclear forces.”
