As Russia blasts Ukraine’s power supply ahead of winter, both sides accuse the other of planning a radioactive explosion.

(Originally published Oct. 24 in “What in the World“) Russia continued its missile and drone strikes against Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure. The goal of these attacks seems, as with most against civilians, aimed at punishing the population into submission. But the annals of war—from the Blitz of London to carpet bombing Hanoi—show that civilian bombardment, though lethal, virtually never works and, on the contrary, only helps galvanize public resistance. Indeed, only one instance comes to mind in which civilian bombardment succeeded in extinguishing a nation’s will to fight: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Civilian bombing is thus perhaps a warning that a combatant is growing desperate.

Indeed, Russian forces appear close to losing the southern port city of Kherson and face renewed stalemate in the northeastern border where Ukraine launched its surprisingly successful September surprise counterattack. The concern in Washington is that the situation may prompt Russian President Vladimir Putin to make good on his threat to deploy nuclear weapons. To try to forestall that, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last week held two phone calls with his Russian counterpart, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

While the U.S. and its European allies have tried to make clear that any use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine by Russia would be met with a devastating response, Russia has warned that it now views any attack on the territories in eastern Ukraine that it annexed earlier this month—in addition to Crimea, annexed in 2014—as attacks on Russian soil.

Moscow has also said it believes Ukraine intends to deploy a so-called dirty bomb—a conventional explosive combined with radioactive material—on its own territory. Kyiv and Washington rejected that warning, with Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelensky accusing Russia of using the claim to prepare a dirty bomb attack of its own.