Vladimir Putin’s statement that Moscow could widen its rules for nuclear weapon use may have redrawn the red line in his atomic intimidation, but is also likely a bluff, experts have told Newsweek.
Soon after his full-scale invasion, the Russian president had previously said that countries that interfered in Ukraine would face consequences “never seen in your entire history,” and put his nuclear forces on special alert.
Kremlin propagandists refer to lobbing missiles into Western capitals, but The Washington Post reported this week how Russian diplomats realized nuclear threats amplified by the Kremlin “don’t frighten anyone.” Newsweek has contacted NATO and the Kremlin for email comment.
However, on Wednesday, Putin upped the ante of his rhetoric with changes to Moscow’s opaque “nuclear doctrine,” which could include responding to a massive launch of missiles or drones crossing its state border.
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During a televised meeting of Russia’s Security Council, Putin said an attack that poses a critical threat to the sovereignty of Russia could be carried by a nonnuclear power with the participation or support of a nuclear power.
No countries were mentioned, but the context was clear, as the war he started has seen an increase in Ukraine’s use of American, British and French missiles on Russian targets.
However, Gustav Gressel, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Putin’s comments do not signal any changes to Russia’s nuclear posture. “It’s a bluff,” he told Newsweek. “If they’d mean it, we’d all have had a nuclear escalation already.”
Putin’s Red Lines
He noted how, according to Russian legislation, five regions of Ukraine that Moscow claims to have annexed are already considered to be part of Russia and thus any Ukrainian defensive operation on them would be deemed an attack supported by the West.
“So, there is technically no chance to even consider this nonsense,” Gressel said. “Russia’s official nuclear doctrine was very flexible in the past. Almost anything could be bent to it.
“In practice, however, whether or not Russia uses nuclear weapons depends on the cost-risk calculation,” Gressel added. This included whether a nuclear strike makes Russia’s situation better or worse.
In a paper for the Stockholm Center for Security Studies published in June, Gressel wrote that the discussion of Putin’s “red lines,” which, if crossed, would trigger escalation, did not take into account that, for Moscow, nuclear weapons are for deterrence.
The fear of escalation has had an undue influence on Western political decision-making, such as on issues of providing weapons. “The renewed nuclear bluster by Russia is a sign of Western weakness,” Gressel said. “They seem to think Biden’s counter-threats made for the case of a Russian nuclear release are not quite credible.”
If NATO “falls for this, we’ll get ourselves in real trouble,” Gressel added. “The thing we need to do now is to show the Kremlin big middle fingers—in all shades, sizes and forms.”
Nuclear warnings from Moscow come from a well-worn playbook. However, Putin’s latest threat is milder than the ones made by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during the 1950s and early 1960s, according to Soviet historian Sergey Radchenko, professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.
“The 1950s were more dangerous than what we have today, because at that time you did not yet have a clear understanding by all the parties involved of the logic of mutually assured destruction,” Radchenko told Newsweek. “What we have today is strategic stability, and this strategic stability has not gone away with the end of the Cold War.”
Radchenko said that changes to Moscow’s nuclear doctrine are difficult to judge because the document is “a little bit obscure” and there is a question mark over its central premise. “The issue is how do you define a threat to the country’s survival?”
Nuclear Doctrine
While changes Putin announced may be “disturbing” if they entailed applying a nuclear deterrent to countries that can be interpreted as Ukraine, “that does not address this other issue about the existential threat,” Radchenko said.
“The doctrine is extremely limited,” he added. “It is a psychological weapon more than anything, and when it comes to the decision to use nuclear weapons, I don’t think it actually matters at all.”
Also, unlike in the Khrushchev era, satellite technology will give the West warning of any imminent nuclear move.
“The right approach is to look for signs that Russia might be preparing to use nuclear weapons, whether it’s tactical nuclear weapons or strategic nuclear weapons,” said Radchenko. “That is a much more reliable indication of what, when and how Russia might use nuclear weapons than any piece of paper might otherwise indicate.”
Putin also said that Moscow could use a nuclear weapon, even in response to an attack carried out with conventional weapons that creates “a critical threat to our sovereignty.”
Kyiv has claimed to have captured 500 square miles in its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington to reiterate calls to the U.S. to allow its weapons for long-range strikes in Russian territory.
Sergey Mironov, leader of the party A Just Russia, which is part of the systemic opposition that sides with Kremlin foreign policy, said the new nuclear doctrine “will deprive the United States of the opportunity to wage war against Russia with someone else’s hands,” referring to Ukraine.
“Nuclear weapons will perform the same role that they originally performed— the role of deterring foreign aggression in all its manifestations,” Mironov told Newsweek in a statement.
However, John Hardie, deputy director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ (FDD) Russia Program, said that, while Putin has signaled a change in declaratory policy about nuclear weapons, it is unlikely to have much impact on the war in Ukraine.
“It doesn’t mark a shift in their thinking; it’s codifying where they’re at,” Hardie told Newsweek.
“The Russians have so far not decided to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and I don’t really see that changing, absent some sort of major potential trigger that more likely could be some sort of major collapse, like one that threatens Russia’s hold on Crimea.”
