Former Soviet leader and Nobel prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev warned that the battle in Ukraine could result in a nuclear war:

“A war of this kind would unavoidably lead to a nuclear war,” the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner told Der Spiegel news magazine, according to excerpts released on Friday.

“We won’t survive the coming years if someone loses their nerve in this overheated situation,” added Gorbachev, 83. “This is not something I’m saying thoughtlessly. I am extremely concerned.”

One of America’s top experts on Russia – Steven Cohen – has warned that failure to negotiate a peace treaty in Ukraine could lead to nuclear war.

Steven Starr – a nuclear arms expert and senior scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility – warns that proposed U.S. legislation would be a direct path towards nuclear war with Russia.

Former Russian advisor to Margaret Thatcher John Bowne said yesterday:

I think it is dire particularly because President Obama has had the wrong end of the stick, and he follows a strategic mistake. When President Reagan and Secretary of State Gorbachev, with the assistance of Margret Thatcher, achieved an end to the cold war, in other words, the colder part of Second World War in the mid 1980’s, it was agreed, if not in writing but tacitly, that neither side would try to poach on the old buffer states of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. From the Russian point of view, they see a number of countries have voted quite democratically, like Poland, to go into the European Union and be associated with NATO and things like that. They have also seen activity by the secret services of the West, most notably the CIA in the Ukraine, to persuade them to go. This has angered the Russians, and when you come to the Ukraine and Crimea, you are treading on vital interests of Russia. It is very similar to the situation in October of 1962, when Khrushchev of the Soviet Union decided to put intercontinental ballistic missiles in Cuba, right in the soft underbelly of the United States, threating the vital interests of the United States. In that confrontation, President Kennedy had to win even if it meant nuclear war. He had to win that battle. In this case, we have the West interfering in the soft underbelly of Russia, notably the Ukraine and in Crimea. This threatens the vital interest of Russia like a warm water port with access to the Eastern Mediterranean, which they have sought for 200 years. Putin, who enjoys 80 percent domestic support, has to win even if it means going to war.

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This would have a very high risk of slipping into nuclear war. Russia has enormous ground forces, and they are very up to date. Putin has updated the Russian armed forces tremendously. They have very sophisticated rocket weapons, and if we saw massive numbers of our troops being slaughtered, maybe we would be the first to press the nuclear button. . . . So, this is a desperate situation.

Former Polish president – and famed anti-communist activist – Lech Walesa also warned that the U.S. and Nato’s arming of Ukraine could lead to a nuclear war.

Leading American political activist Noam Chomsky agrees.

Australian doctor and Nobel prize winner Helen Caldicott warns:

The expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders is “very, very dangerous,” Caldicott said. “There is no way a war between the United States and Russia could start and not go nuclear. … The United States and Russia have enormous stockpiles of these weapons. Together they have 94 percent of all the 16,300 nuclear weapons in the world.”

“We are in a very fallible, very dangerous situation operated by mere mortals,” she warned. “The nuclear weapons, are sitting there, thousands of them. They are ready to be used.”

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Caldicott strongly criticized Obama administration policymakers for their actions in forward positioning U.S. and NATO military units in countries of Eastern Europe in response to Russian support of breakaway separatists in the provinces of eastern Ukraine. On –, the U.S. government announced the deployment of the Ironhorse Brigade, an elite armored cavalry unit of the U.S. Army to the former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, along the historic invasion route from the West to St. Petersburg.

“Do they really want a nuclear war with Russia?” she asked “The only war that you can have with Russia is a nuclear war. … You don’t provoke paranoid countries armed with nuclear weapons.”

And see this, this, this, this, this and this.

Indeed, Eric Zuesse says that the risks are so high – and the American leaders so reckless – that Russia ispreparing for an expected nuclear attack by the U.S.

Postscript: In the 1987 book To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Secret War Plans, one of the world’s leading physicists – Michio Kaku – revealed declassified plans for the U.S. to launch a first-strike nuclear war against Russia. The forward was written by the former Attorney General of the United States, Ramsey Clarke.

In Towards a World War III Scenario, Michel Chossudovsky documents that the U.S. is so enamored with nuclear weapons that it has authorized low-level field commanders to use them in the heat of battle in their sole discretion … without any approval from civilian leaders.

May cooler heads prevail …