Ukraine war: Vladimir Putin ups the ante on his nuclear blackmail – the big question is how the west will respond

Christoph Bluth, University of Bradford

Vladimir Putin has announced what appears to be a dramatic strengthening of Russia’s nuclear doctrine. The Russian president was responding to speculation that the west may relax its restrictions on Ukraine’s use of its weapons to attack targets inside Russia.

He told his security council that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons if it was attacked by any state with conventional weapons. The trigger for the launch of nuclear missiles against Ukraine or any of its allies, he said, would be “reliable information about a massive launch of aerospace attack means and their crossing of our state border”.

Whether this will affect the thinking of Ukraine’s western allies about the use of its long-range missiles has yet to be seen. But one of the major features of the public discourse about the Ukraine war has been the risk of the use of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear threats have been a standard tactic for the Russian leadership. Whenever Ukraine receives new weapons from the west or is allowed to use western arms to target Russian territory Moscow has responded by either referring to the devastation it could wreak with its nuclear arsenal or by holding a drill to remind the west of its existence.

But there have recently been reports of a growing realisation among Putin’s close advisers that these threats are beginning to wear thin, as one after another of Moscow’s “red lines” are ignored.

Nevertheless, despite providing Ukraine with the most advanced air defence systems and offensive missiles that could strike targets deep within Russia – and perhaps even influence the course of the war – Nato countries are maintaining a strict limit on their use. It’s an indication that despite scepticism about Putin’s willingness to use nuclear weapons, deterrence remains robust – in western minds anyway.

Nuclear deterrence is based on the threat to inflict “unacceptable damage” on an enemy. It is credible only if the adversary believes that the threat is accompanied by the capability and will to follow through.

Nuclear powers have generally conducted nuclear messaging by publicising guidelines for the use of their arsenals. Nato’s current strategic concept was adopted by heads of state and government at the alliance’s summit in Madrid in June 2022. It states: “The circumstances in which Nato might have to use nuclear weapons are extremely remote.”

But the document stresses that if nuclear weapons were used against any Nato member state it would “fundamentally alter” any conflict in which Nato was engaged. It goes on to warn that: “The Alliance has the capabilities and resolve to impose costs on an adversary that would be unacceptable and far outweigh the benefits that any adversary could hope to achieve.”

Russia, meanwhile, is reportedly updating its nuclear doctrine in response to what it says is “western escalation” in the war in Ukraine. The current doctrine, established by a decree in 2020, says Russia can use nuclear weapons to respond to a nuclear attack by an enemy, or to a conventional attack that “threatens the existence of the state”.

The latest statement by Putin is apparently the “draft” of a reworked nuclear doctrine. It certainly appears to lower the bar on resorting to the use of nuclear weapons.

Sabre rattling

The Russian leader made his first overt threat to use nuclear weapons in the conflict in Ukraine in September 2022. He was overseeing the annexation of four occupied Ukrainian provinces after hastily arranged plebiscites, which were generally regarded in the west as being rigged.

He stated that “the US is the only country in the world that twice used nuclear weapons, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Incidentally, they created a precedent.”

He went on to assert that during the second world war the US and Britain had deliberately bombed several German cities to rubble. This, he insisted, had the “sole goal, just like in the case of nuclear bombardments in Japan, to scare our country and the entire world”.

But CIA director William Burns recently said the west should not take Putin’s threats seriously: “Putin’s a bully. He’s going to continue to sabre rattle from time to time.” https://www.youtube.com/embed/rp5PeoAW6mI?wmode=transparent&start=0 CIA director Wiliam Burns and MI6 chief Richatrd Moore in conversation at an FT conference, September 2024.

Burns told a festival organised by the Financial Times on September 7 that: “There was a moment in the fall of 2022 when I think there was a genuine risk of potential use of tactical nuclear weapons … I never thought … we should be unnecessarily intimidated by that.”

He said he had subsequently passed on a message from US president Joe Biden to Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Russian foreign intelligence service at a meeting in Turkey in November 2022 “to make very clear what the consequences of that kind of escalation would be”.

US satellite networks and other intelligence sources have shown no evidence of any preparations for the employment of nuclear weapons. This is despite Russian claims that the alert status of Russian forces has been raised.

But Putin’s proxies have been busily putting out propaganda messages to reinforce their leader’s threats. According to the Washington Post, Alexander Mikhailov, the director of the Bureau of Military Political Analysis, recently called for Russia to bomb plywood mock-ups of London and Washington to simulate a nuclear attack, so that that would “burn so beautifully that it will horrify the world”.

The speaker of the lower house, Vyacheslav Volodin, warned that strikes on Russia would lead to war with nuclear weapons and warned that the European parliament in Strasbourg was only a three-minute flight for a Russian nuclear missile.

So far Putin’s threats have been sufficient to limit the scope of western involvement. Whether the Russian president’s latest threat will be effective is now the question.

Christoph Bluth, Professor of International Relations and Security, University of Bradford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.