With Vladimir Putin issuing one other thinly veiled nuclear risk to the West, I’ve come to considered one of Moscow’s Chilly Battle bunkers to gauge the temper.
The doorway is thru an apparently bizarre constructing, not removed from the Kremlin.
However inside, there are 18 flights of stairs, which take you 65m (213ft) underground and right into a sprawling community of tunnels and chambers.
Virtually instantly, it feels as if I’ve travelled again in time. There’s Soviet memorabilia in all places, even a model of Stalin.
Bunker-42 was constructed as a high secret command centre for Moscow’s strategic bombers, and it remained so till 1986.
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Moscow’s Bunker-42 was a high secret command centre
It is now a museum and my journey coincides with a Russian tour group.
So what do they consider Vladimir Putin’s newest risk – that Russia might hit the crimson button if struck by standard weapons?
“Everyone is scared of a situation like this,” one man tells me. “But when you are surrounded by enemies on all sides, there are probably no options left.”
The museum serves as a reminder of how shut the world got here to nuclear conflict.
The group’s faces are lit up within the darkness by a video of big, mushroom-cloud explosions. However nonetheless, there seems no feeling amongst them that Russia is appearing irresponsibly.
“In a situation like ours now, having nuclear weapons and not using them is equivalent to suicide,” says one other man.
“I hope that the West will understand us correctly and stop interfering, back off.”
Is the Kremlin bluffing?
The present tensions are a great distance from the Cuban Missile Disaster, however warnings coming from Moscow give a way that historical past could also be beginning to repeat itself.
And the query now is identical because it was in the course of the Chilly Battle: Is the Kremlin bluffing or not?
In spite of everything, Russia’s crimson traces have been crossed earlier than, since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The West has equipped missiles, battle tanks and fighter jets to Kyiv, all with out escalation.
However this time, apparently, it is completely different.
“Have you ever heard the old Russian proverb, that Russians are long to move, but then they move fast? That’s the case,” Maria Butina, a Russian MP, instructed me outdoors the State Duma.
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Russian MP Maria Butina has warned the West to take Russia’s nuclear risk significantly
So if Ukraine makes use of British Storm Shadow missiles to strike inside Russia, will Moscow “move fast” and nuke London?
Her reply: “Everything that is written in our nuclear doctrine, you should take very seriously.”
Nuclear risk is Russian ‘rhetoric’
However these outdoors Russia aren’t so certain.
“It’s rhetoric,” Sam Greene, Professor of Russian politics at King’s Faculty London, instructed me.
“The indication is that Russia, for all of its bluster and for all of its aggression, does not want a nuclear conflict with the West, or even a conventional conflict with NATO, any more than the West wants that sort of conflict with Russia.
“The purpose of that is to make it harder for Western policymakers to choose a plan of action.”
In the meantime, again within the bunker, the tour wraps up with a simulation of what would’ve occurred within the occasion of a nuclear assault.
The tunnel is plunged into darkness. A siren blares. Pink lights flash. Then a voice broadcasts the destruction of Moscow after an enemy strike.
However the one one threatening this course now, in fact, is Russia itself.
