One of Australia’s highest-ranking ex-servicemen and current NSW Senator Jim Molan has explore the consequences if Russia unleashes nuclear war within Ukraine exclusively to FlowNews24.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian state media in late April that the arrival of Western arms into Ukraine means it is now fighting a "proxy war" against member countries of the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
President Vladimir Putin threatened unspecified retaliation, while foreign minister Lavrov warned of a threat of nuclear war.
Hitherto neutral border Scandinavian nations Sweden and Finland have now chosen to apply to join NATO following Russia's invasion. Ukraine's ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroschnychenko said on 26 April that it was encouraging that more countries were looking to join NATO and support Ukraine following the conflict.
"It's reassuring to see the support coming from Finland and Sweden.
"The popularity of these countries joining NATO was still not enough three months ago."
Senator Molan is seeking re-election on the Liberal ticket on the 21 May election and sits third on the joint Liberal-National ticket, a place potentially to be in the running for the last of six NSW senate seats decided. The former major-general workshopped with Flow some of the possible contingency plans that various sovereignties may look to utiliseshould the threat of biochemically-influenced hostility ensue in Ukrainian or Russian occupied areas:
"They would have contingencies prepared for just about every eventuality."
"There are to my knowledge, five aircraft carriers which are in various seas, the Mediterranean, the Arctic, various places that can launch their aircraft into Ukraine and into Russia."
"I would suspect that the Russians would know absolutely everything about that, I would suspect there would be hundreds and hundreds of NATO aircraft which are primed and ready to go if the Russians do use weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological or nuclear weapons."
Hear the full interview with Senator Jim Molan on the Flow podcast player below:
Pope Francis has asked to meet with President Putin in Moscow but the Vatican said on Tuesday through Italian media it had not received a reply. He said the message was:
"that I was willing to go to Moscow. Certainly, it was necessary for the Kremlin leader to allow an opening. We have not yet received a response and we are still insisting".
"I fear that Putin cannot, and does not, want to have this meeting at this time. But how can you not stop so much brutality?"
Molan dismissed the hope that a nuclear strike could be prevented before striking Ukraine:
"I don't think they're capable of intercepting a tactical, nuclear weapon fired by a missile out of Russia into, for example, Kiev."
Molan speculated that Russia would have intelligence of how devastating a coalition of resistance, by sea and air, could be and that this was the key reason why it is yet to employ a heavy-handed approach in its current assault of Ukraine.
"Should a tactical nuclear weapon be used within Ukraine, I would like to think that there will be an instant, immediate and violent reaction from NATO which would be conventional in nature.
"It would be a conventional attack on every Russian concentration, via aircraft using conventional weapons and by submarine launch, cruise missiles, by hundreds and hundreds of cruise missiles from all around Europe, from submarines etc
"I suspect that Russia has been told in great detail about that and that is what's keeping Russia on the straight and narrow."
The former special envoy for Operation Sovereign Borders during Tony Abbott’s Prime Ministership is renowned for having one of the most prestigious military CVs in Australian public life.
Having been deployed to Iraq 18 years ago in a high-level role overseeing hundreds of military corporals, the NSW Senator reminisced about his historical service to Australia’s military sector on Flow last week:
“I've worked in American headquarters at war in the past and I've run American forces as Chief of Operations in Iraq, you know, 150,000 Americans."