A distinctive feature of Russia’s military strategy has been that it does not rule out the use of nuclear weapons in conventional warfare.
Now, President Vladimir Putin has further relaxed the ban on deploying tactical and more powerful strategic nuclear weapons, in a sweeping overhaul of his country’s nuclear doctrine. The change comes as the U.S. eases restrictions on Ukrainian forces firing U.S. weapons on Russian soil.
Regardless of whether Putin is actually ready to go nuclear, the threat is intended to show the world that Russia is a major power and that Washington and its allies should limit their support for Ukraine. This is the main reason they have gradually allowed Kiev to use more powerful weapons, and have refrained from sending troops to help repel a Russian invasion.
What has changed?
Under the revised nuclear guidelines, the Kremlin could use nuclear weapons in response to an attack on Russian soil by Kiev using conventional Western weapons. The change comes after Putin ordered Russia’s military in May to conduct war exercises to prepare for the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Previously, the Russian government had given itself the option of a nuclear response if an aggressor threatened Russia’s “superior existence.” The November update now refers to attacks that “pose a serious threat to the sovereignty and (or) territorial integrity” of Russia and its neighbor and ally Belarus.
Under the revised doctrine, potential targets of nuclear attack include not only nations that attack Russia directly, but also any state that provides its territory and resources for the preparation and execution of acts of aggression against Russia. does
The doctrine states that any attack on Russia would be considered an attack by all members of an alliance, bloc or coalition of which the attacking country is a member. Russia will also consider perceived aggression by a non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state as a joint attack by both.
What has Putin said about the use of nuclear weapons?
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin threatened any nation that intervened in the conflict with “consequences that you have never experienced in your history.” It was widely seen as a threat of nuclear attack. In June 2023, Putin said that Russia had deployed some of its tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, an ally that has been a key staging ground for Russian attacks on Ukraine. Russia regularly conducts exercises to test its strategic weapons delivery systems, including ICBMs and short-range cruise missiles.
In February, in response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to send troops to Ukraine, Putin cited new Russian strategic weapons entering service and said the United States and Europe must understand that we have There are also weapons that can hit targets on their soil. That all this really threatens is a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and therefore the destruction of civilization.
Putin later softened that stance, telling an interviewer in March that the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war had never occurred to him and that he did not think Russia and the United States were headed for nuclear conflict. are growing
So far, Putin has not authorized Russia’s military to test a tactical nuclear warhead, saying he would only do so in response to a US nuclear test.
What explains Russia’s interest in tactical nuclear weapons?
Nuclear weapons are primarily seen as a deterrent: their sheer destructive power makes a potential attacker think twice about attacking. Tactical nuclear weapons, of which Russia has many, can serve another purpose: victory in conventional warfare.
A Russian strategy called “escalate to de-escalate” considers using tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield to change a conflict that Russian forces are at risk of losing.
John Hyten, who served as America’s top nuclear weapons official, says a more accurate translation of Russian strategy is “grow to win.”
What is a tactical nuclear weapon?
“Tactical” is a poor term for a nuclear weapon that can be used in a theater of war. It usually refers to a less powerful warhead (the explosive head of a missile, rocket, or torpedo) that is delivered at a shorter range—mines, artillery, cruise missiles, or aircraft-dropped bombs. — through “strategic” nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia could launch on each other’s territory using intercontinental ballistic missiles. Arms control agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union beginning in the 1970s (and later between the United States and Russia) focused largely on the number of strategic nuclear weapons, not the strategy.
How powerful can a tactical nuclear weapon be?
While today’s most powerful strategic warheads measure in the hundreds of kilotons, tactical nuclear weapons can have an explosive yield of less than 1 kiloton. Many are in tens of kilotons. For some perspective, the explosive yields of the atomic bombs dropped by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were 15 kilotons and 20 kilotons, respectively.
What is in Russia’s arsenal?
The US Department of Defense reported in 2018 that Russia has “significant advantages” over the US and its allies in tactical nuclear forces and is improving delivery capabilities. Researchers at the Federation of American Scientists estimate that entering 2022, Russia had 4,477 nuclear warheads, of which 1,525 — about a third — could be considered strategic.
What would a tactical nuclear attack look like?
Nina Tanenwald, author The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Nonuse of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945even paints the scenario of a miniaturized nuclear weapon, with an explosive yield of 0.3 kilotons, that would “cause much more damage than conventional explosives.” This, he wrote in Scientific American in March 2022, “could cause all the horrors of Hiroshima on a smaller scale.” However, it is possible that if detonated at the right altitude, a small-yield warhead could wipe out opposing forces without leaving behind long-term radiation damage that limits the battlefield to everyone.
How will the world respond?
Because Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — Putin has demanded that it never be allowed to join — the United States and its allies are under no obligation to come to its defense. But the West would be under great pressure to respond to a nuclear attack, perhaps with a tactical weapon of its own. From there, it will be anyone’s guess.
“I don’t think there is such a thing as the ability to easily use tactical nuclear weapons and end up with Armageddon,” Biden warned in 2022.
The United States is believed to have about 150 B-61 nuclear gravity bombs—airdropped, with variable yields that can be as low as 0.3 kilotons—in five NATO countries: Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Deployed in Italy and Turkey. Two other NATO members, Britain and France, are known to have nuclear weapons. And Poland expressed interest in “sharing” US nuclear weapons, which could mean anything from offering escort or spy planes for nuclear missions to actually hosting the weapons.
