James Cunningham’s letter failed to match the status of a respectful newspaper (“Did Cuban missile crisis delay the inevitable?”, September 23).
First of all, let be it known that the Cuban missile crisis broke out in 1962, not 1963. Captain second rank Vasili Arkhipov, credited with the salvation of the world, was in fact chief of staff of the 69th submarine brigade and the B59’s senior officer, not its “second-in-command”.
The rest of the “expertise” splashed on the readers of Business Day was characterised by the same “degree of approximation”, which is understandable since Mr Cunningham is apparently so busy writing to all sorts of SA newspapers that he has no time to properly study the issues he writes about.
In keeping with recent propaganda trends, the author accuses Russia of “nuclear threats” in yet another distortion of President Vladimir Putin’s message by mainstream media. In fact, the sequence is exactly the opposite: it is high-ranking officials of the leading Nato countries who publicly admitted using nuclear weapons against Russia. What President Putin said was merely a reaction to it.
Why begin from the end? Why not tell about then French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who as long ago as February 25 said “Vladimir Putin must also understand that the Atlantic alliance is a nuclear alliance”? Why not mention reckless British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who in August openly declared herself ready to use nukes against Russia? This format does not allow us to provide the full list, but Mr Cunningham himself suggested staging a “pre-emptive strike” against our country!
We also urge the author, who cited the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in his letter, to remember which country did that. It was not Russia. To date, the US remains the only country in human history to ever use nuclear weapons, and moreover to use them against civilians.
Alexander Arefiev, Press attaché, embassy of Russia
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