DEVELOPING Latest updates on the major wildfires burning in Canada
The 2024 wildfire season has begun, and it's shaping up to follow last year's unprecedented destruction in kind, with thousands of square kilometres already consumed.
U.S. officials believe that the likelihood Russian President Vladimir Putin will use a tactical nuclear weapon in his struggling war in Ukraine is perhaps the highest it has been since Russia invaded in February — but is still not probable, multiple officials familiar with the latest intelligence tell CNN.
The intelligence community is closely watching for any signs that Putin's calculus has changed after the Russian president was widely perceived last week to be escalating his past threats to use nuclear weapons.
The threat is certainly "elevated" compared to earlier in the year, according to multiple sources. The U.S. in recent months has been privately warning Russia not to take such a catastrophic step.
But so far, there are no signs that Russia is imminently planning their use and the "general assessment hasn't changed," one source familiar with the intelligence said.
Several U.S. defense officials, who also said they see no indication at this time of Russia moving nuclear weapons around, said they believe it's likely the U.S. could detect movement even of smaller tactical warheads.
Officials have long believed that Putin would only turn to a nuclear weapon if there was a threat to his own position, or if he perceived an existential threat to Russia itself -- which he may consider a loss in Ukraine to be.
Some Russian military analysts believe that Putin's mobilization order may in fact decrease the short-term risk he will turn to a battlefield nuke, because it will prolong his ability to sustain the conventional war.
The general sense inside the US government that the threat is higher than before is based primarily on Putin's rhetoric and analysis of his mindset amid Russian losses in Ukraine, rather than any hard intelligence that Russia is more seriously weighing the nuclear option, according to two sources familiar with the intelligence.
For example, some officials are concerned that Putin could take extreme steps to protect Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine, amid sham referendums held there that are expected to result in Russia forcibly annexing the territory. Putin also said last week that Russia's threats to deploy a nuclear weapon are "not a bluff."
Still, the intelligence community's view into Putin's decision-making calculus is imperfect and multiple sources acknowledged that even a marginally higher probability of the use of such weapons is concerning. Russia's dismal performance and Ukraine's relative success in its recent offensive push in the northeast have left Moscow with a vanishing number of choices on the battlefield.
"It's hard to track definitively if/when he would give such an order," one of the sources said. "Or how his own mental calculus is playing out."
There is little concern that Russia will use what is known as a "strategic" nuclear weapon — warheads that have explosive yields of 500 to 800 kilotons and are designed to destroy entire cities.
"Tactical," or "battlefield" warheads — also known as "low yield" warheads — are designed for use in a battlefield setting. They have explosive yields of 10 to 100 kilotons of dynamite. But they can still be unimaginably deadly: the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945 were the equivalent of about 15 to 21 kilotons, respectively.
Perhaps the more important distinction, some analysts say, is how a warhead is used rather than its yield. Some officials -- like former U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis -- believe the "tactical" v. "strategic" distinction is meaningless. Using either would cross a rubicon not traversed since 1945.
Officials familiar with the intelligence say Putin has a number of options in how he could choose to deploy such a weapon. He could test one at sea as a show of force and an effort to force concessions from either the west or Ukraine. Or he could move to use one inside Ukraine itself, either on the battlefield or in a population center — an option that several US officials said would instantly make him a pariah on the global stage. Some officials believe that even countries like China and India would move to isolate Russia if Putin took such a drastic step.
How the U.S. responds would depend on which of those options Putin chose, President Joe Biden said in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" earlier this month.
The U.S. reaction would be "consequential," but would depend "on the extent of what they do," Biden said, without providing further details.
In a speech last week, Putin warned that, "In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff."
U.S. officials have emphasized that this is not the first time Putin has threatened to turn to nuclear weapons since the start of his re-invasion of Ukraine in February, although some analysts have seen this threat as more specific and escalatory than the Russian president's past rhetoric.
The U.S. has also sought to deter Russia from using a nuclear weapon in public warnings in the past and made the issue a theme of remarks at the UN General Assembly this week in New York. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week said Russia's "reckless nuclear threats must stop immediately."
The 2024 wildfire season has begun, and it's shaping up to follow last year's unprecedented destruction in kind, with thousands of square kilometres already consumed.
Veteran TSN broadcaster Darren 'Dutch' Dutchyshen, one of Canada’s best-known sports journalists, has died. He was 57. His family says 'he passed as he was surrounded by his closest loved ones.'
A ‘lifetime of abuse’ led Dallas Ly to snap and repeatedly stab his mother inside their Leslieville apartment in 2022 but he never intended to kill her, his defence lawyers argued during at his murder trial in Toronto on Thursday.
A burgeoning track star says his dream of going to the Olympics is being derailed by a deportation order after Immigration officials rejected his family’s claim for asylum
A father has been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of his 34-year-old daughter in southern Quebec.
A medical examiner says a Massachusetts teen who participated in a spicy tortilla chip challenge died from ingesting a substance 'with a high capsaicin concentration.'
A Montreal father who kidnapped his daughter who has autism and lied to police when they asked where she was should serve three years in prison, a Crown prosecutor said.
The province’s health minister and solicitor general are urging Toronto to rescind its request to decriminalize simple possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use, calling the proposal 'misguided' and 'disastrous.'
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assailed New Brunswick's premier and other conservative leaders on Thursday, calling out the provincial government's position on abortion, LGBTQ youth and climate change.
A Starbucks fan — whose name is Winter — is visiting Canada on a purposeful journey that began with a random idea at one of the coffee chain's stores in Texas.
Members of Piapot First Nation, students from the University of Winnipeg and various other professionals are learning new techniques that will hopefully be used for ground searches of potential unmarked grave sites in the future.
ALS patient Mathew Brown said he’s hopeful for future ALS patients after news this week of research at Western University of a potential cure for ALS.
When Adam Kirschner wrote 'Slap Shot,' he never imagined the song would be embraced by his favourite team.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.