A Russian state news agency has publicized rare footage of Vladimir Putin arriving in Beijing accompanied by officers carrying a briefcase known as the “Cheget.”
“There are certain suitcases without which no trip of Putin’s is complete,” a Kremlin correspondent of the state news agency RIA stated on Telegram, as reported by Reuters. The video shows Putin leaving a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but the camera lingers on two Russian naval officers, each carrying a briefcase.
The nuclear briefcase is called the “Cheget,” after Mount Cheget in the Caucasus Mountains. Similar to the U.S. president’s “nuclear football,” it is with Putin at all times and allows him to order a nuclear strike wherever he may be, according to Reuters.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu also has a nuclear briefcase, and the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, may also have one as well.
As a result of the war in Ukraine, relations between Moscow and Washington are worse than they have been since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Russia recently withdrew its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which has raised concerns about the possibility of a renewed global arms race, according to KERA News.
Tensions are also set to increase as the Biden administration has reportedly pledged to give Ukraine more powerful weapons to use against Russia.
In a briefing on Friday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was asked if new weapons were being sent to Ukraine that had not been previously provided.
“[A]s you know, over the course of the war that Russia has perpetrated against Ukraine, we have added new weapon systems over time,” Sullivan answered. “[W]e have contracted for certain types of weapons systems that have yet to be delivered because they’re still in production. And we expect them to be delivered in the coming months.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, President Joe Biden made an appeal to the American public to support his push to spend more taxpayer money on aid to both Ukraine and Israel.
