The video cameras of the official Russian agency RIA Novosti captured rare images on Wednesday of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing accompanied by officers carrying the nuclear briefcase, which can be used to order a nuclear attack.
After a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Putin was filmed walking to another meeting surrounded by security and followed by two uniformed Russian naval officers, who are traditionally charged with carrying him, each carrying a briefcase. The agency’s cameras focus especially on one of them.
Known as Cheget (named after a mountain in the Caucasus Mountains), the briefcase accompanies the president at all times, but is rarely filmed.
“There are certain suitcases without which no Putin trip is complete,” the state news agency’s Kremlin correspondents said in a Telegram post accompanying the images.
In another recording, Putin leaves a meeting in Beijing with naval officers again filmed just steps away from Putin, who smiles as he descends a flight of stairs.
The president of the United States also has such a device, known as a nuclear balloon. The briefcase, which accompanies the president wherever he goes, contains the codes that the president would use to authenticate an order to launch nuclear missiles if he were not in the White House.
The Ukraine war has raised tensions between Moscow and Washington to the highest level since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, just as China seeks to strengthen its nuclear arsenal.
The Russian parliament on Tuesday took the first step toward revoking ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban treaty and warned the United States that Moscow could even abandon the pact entirely.
Essentially, the briefcase is a secure communications tool that links the president to his top military commanders, and from there, to the rocket forces through a top-secret electronic command and control network known as Kazbek.
The Russian Defense Minister, currently Sergei Shoigu, also has a nuclear briefcase. The head of the General Staff, currently Valery Gerasimov, may also have one.
