He followed his aide down the hallway until they entered the briefing room. Everyone in attendance snapped to attention. He signaled for them to take their seats as he made his way to the center of the table.
He nodded first toward his admiral; he thought he’d let him lead off with the morning brief. Petrukhin obliged. “Mr. President, last night, the Allied fleet in the Barents Sea hit our naval facility in and around Murmansk with 160 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Our missile defense system was able to shoot down 54 of the missiles. Unfortunately, most of the naval facility has been rendered useless and destroyed. We had thought the Allies would leave them intact, hoping to secure them with a ground invasion — we had expected to battle them on land and had planned accordingly. Once they destroyed the facility, we noticed the fleet was not slowing down to take up positions offshore. Rather, the fleet continued at top speed, and it now appears the Allied fleet is actually heading into the White Sea. This is a guess, but we believe the fleet is going to land their ground forces at Severodvinsk and will then move on Arkhangelsk.”
This turn of events perplexed everyone in the room. It made no sense for the Allies to try and land forces that far north, at the start of the very long northern Russian winter. The White Sea, if not patrolled heavily by icebreakers, was frozen over for most of the winter.
Scratching his beard, General Egorkin asked, “How many troops are estimated to be in the Allied landing force?”
The admiral flipped through a couple of papers to find the number. “Eh the British committed two divisions, the Canadians one division, the French one division, the Brazilians one division, and the Americans two divisions. So, roughly 70,000 troops.”
“So, we’ll have seventy thousand soldiers in northern Russia?” Egorkin verified.
Admiral Petrukhin nodded.
Egorkin held up a hand up to forestall any disagreement or outburst by anyone else. “This is a good thing,” he asserted. “These soldiers are roughly 1,100 kilometers from St. Petersburg, and 1,200 kilometers from Moscow. They’re also going to be socked in for at least four months during the winter, which is just now starting in northern Russia. The Allies will have to keep these forces fed and supplied during that four-month period, which will be incredibly hard to do considering much of the White Sea freezes over during the winter. No, gentlemen, this landing is not a disaster, it’s a blessing in disguise. It will drain critical resources from the Allies’ army in Europe, which will only help our cause. Those 70,000 soldiers that will capture Arkhangelsk will be 70,000 soldiers we won’t have to face in Europe.” A genuine smile spread across his face and he leaned back in his chair, putting his arms behind his head briefly.
Petrov grunted. “I don’t think I’d thought of it that way, General. You bring up a very valid point. What forces do we have there to defend the city right now?” he inquired.
“Not much, Mr. President. We never thought the Americans would invade that far north, so we don’t have a lot of units in that area. We have roughly one brigade of soldiers in that district,” answered Egorkin. “They are ready to defend the beaches if you’d like them to.”
The president shook his head. “No, General. Don’t have them die meeting the enemy at the shore. Have them plan on fighting an insurgency throughout the winter. Let’s make them bleed, General,” Petrov said with fire in his eyes.
Changing subjects, he asked, “What’s going on in Ukraine? Last night you informed me that the Allies had launched some sort of new operation into Belarus.”
Egorkin sighed. Instead of taking the question himself, he nodded toward Lieutenant General Mikhail Chayko, the ground force commander in Europe, to answer.
Clearing his throat before responding, General Chayko started, “Mr. President, the Allies made use of the newly arrived British forces and secured several key road junctions in Belarus and Ukraine. This was quickly followed by an all-out assault by the American Fifth Corps, which was recently augmented with an American armored division and a British armored brigade. They successfully punched a hole through my lines at Brest, Belarus, and are presently driving toward Lutsk and Rivne, Ukraine. It’s a 280-kilometer drive to their objective. Surprisingly, during the last twelve hours, they’ve managed to travel a little more than half of that distance. At their current pace, they will reach Rivne by tonight.”
The generals and admirals looked at the map and the projected path of the Americans. It quickly became apparent that this would place a substantial number of troops more than three hundred kilometers behind their front lines. It would effectively cut off the supply lines to their army group along the Polish-Ukraine border and threaten to isolate more than 380,000 Russian and Indian troops.
Petrov leaned forward, his eyes locked on to General Chayko’s. “What are your plans for dealing with this force in your rear area, General?”
Chayko suddenly looked sweaty. He used a finger to stretch his collar at the neck. “With your permission, Mr. President, I plan on wiping them out, and then continuing to hold the current battle lines through the winter,” he said.
Taking the bait, Petrov asked, “You said with my permission — what are you asking permission to use to wipe the Americans out? And don’t tell me it’s a nuclear weapon. We’ve already determined that any nuclear attack would result in a nuclear attack on our own forces.”
Leaning forward as he replied, Chayko said, “I’d like permission to deploy our Novichok-5 nerve gas and saturate the American positions in Rivne once they arrive. The attack will devastate their ability to operate as an effective fighting force. My reserve divisions stationed in Zhytomyr will then move in and finish the enemy off.”
Minister Kozlov interjected, “Mr. President, I must adamantly disagree with General Chayko. If we use this weapon in the quantities that will be needed to kill this military unit, we will also kill 500,000 civilians — maybe even more. I know the war isn’t turning out how we had hoped, but we can’t stoop to this level. We cannot use this weapon!”
Petrov was taken aback. Kozlov was speaking with more conviction than he had ever shown in any previous meeting.
Chayko jumped back into the conversation, countering, “If we don’t use this weapon now, the Allies will force me to give up our current positions or be cut off from our supply lines and encircled. This needs to be a military decision, Mr. President, not a diplomatic one. If we don’t do this, then we’re going to have to give up our current positions and withdraw. It’ll mean giving up more than 400 kilometers of captured land — land my soldiers have fought and bled over for the past year to give Minister Kozlov the time and bargaining position he said he needed to get a negotiated peace settlement.”
The meeting then shifted from a civil discussion of what to do next to an outright shouting match, with insults and threats of violence between the differing parties being screamed at full volume. Petrov sat back for a moment, not saying anything and just listening to the chaos unfold.
Essentially any suggestion of using a WMD, whether nuclear or chemical, seemed to cause this heated divide among his generals. He bristled thinking about what Vasilek would have said to him if he were there, that they could cause a “fissure” within the military that he might not recover from.
“Well, that traitor’s brains are still splattered against the wall outside my building,” Petrov thought, dismissing the idea that Vasilek’s opinion should have any meaning to him.
This arguing had gone on long enough. He held up his hand up to settle everyone down. “As much as I want to use these weapons to defeat the Allies, I fear their use would necessitate an overwhelming response by the Americans,” he announced.