![]() These tactical nuclear weapons are not deployed and ready for immediate use the way that Russia’s ground- and sea-based strategic nuclear weapons are. Instead, he’d likely opt for one or several of the country’s roughly 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons-less explosive, shorter-range arms intended for use on a battlefield. The general consensus among experts is that if Putin were to reach for his nuclear weapons in the course of his war in Ukraine, he wouldn’t select the kind of long-range, city-destroying, “strategic” nuclear weapons that were so prominent during the Cold War. Movements of Russian tactical nuclear weapons from storage to the field But investing in Ukraine’s unequivocal success, and thus Putin’s utter defeat, may come with the greater risk of a desperate Putin unleashing nuclear war. ![]() This is one of the core conundrums in this confounding war: The United States and its partners are rightly supporting Ukraine’s campaign to regain all the territory it has lost to Russia’s illegal and abhorrent aggression. Kroenig, who served in the Department of Defense and the intelligence community in the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, is relatedly tracking “Putin’s strength at home,” because “if we saw more Russian elites turning against him or publicly criticizing him,” Putin “could seek nuclear use as a way to gamble for resurrection, change the conversation, show that he’s a strong leader.” But if Ukrainians are on the verge of taking back all of their territory, Putin could conceivably turn to nuclear weapons to reverse his military misfortunes and avoid a humiliating defeat. “My take is that, so far, we haven’t seen it.”Ī definitive rout of Russian forces in Ukraine and corresponding threats to Putin’s power at homeĪs a dictator who controls the media, Putin could spin any partial Russian win in Ukraine as a victory, Kroenig reasoned. “We will know it when we see that,” Podvig said of a possible rhetorical shift. This isn’t a bluff.’” That’s the kind of more specific statement that would put Kroenig on higher alert. They need to evacuate these areas immediately, or else I’ll consider nuclear weapons. I warned Ukraine not to attack Russian territory. Matthew Kroenig, a nuclear strategist and my colleague at the Atlantic Council, served up a scenario: Imagine that Putin, seeing the lands he recently annexed about to slip from his grasp, declares, “‘I warned the world that these four regions are Russian territory. Podvig is looking out for a shift away from that doctrine, which could involve Russian leaders more explicitly threatening to use nuclear weapons to halt Ukrainian advances on the battlefield. “I do believe that we are at least several steps away from” Russian nuclear use in Ukraine, Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russian nuclear forces, told me.īelow is a breakdown of what those remaining steps could look like.Ī shift to more explicit, specific nuclear threats by Putin and other Russian officialsĭespite Putin hinting recently that threats to Russian “territorial integrity” could spur the Kremlin to use nuclear weapons, Podvig maintained that the Russian president and other top officials have nevertheless largely been consistent in articulating a defensive doctrine, in which the Russian government would consider using nuclear weapons only if it were to sustain an attack that threatened the existence of the Russian state. In a similar spirit, I asked several experts to share the indicators they’re watching most closely to determine whether Russian nuclear use in Ukraine is imminent-and to help us all separate the signal from the noise. Cohen: What to do about Russia’s nuclear threats dotard” and warning of all manner of nuclear apocalypse, experts advised me to peer past the bombast and look for clues of impending war, such as the evacuation of American noncombatants from South Korea. In 2017, for example, when Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un were calling each other “Little Rocket Man” and a “mentally deranged U.S. But in reporting on nuclear threats over the years, I have learned the pitfalls of assigning undue weight to rhetorical shiny objects. In these circumstances, feeling on edge is only natural. officials have underscored the gravity of the situation as well President Joe Biden recently traced a direct line from what he deemed the serious risk of Putin going nuclear to “ Armageddon.” As Putin has suffered battlefield setbacks and illegally annexed Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine, he has repeatedly threatened to make use of his country’s nuclear weapons-appearing to implicitly extend the protection of Russia’s nuclear arsenal over lands that Ukrainian forces could soon seek to retake. Not since the early days of the war in Ukraine have these questions felt so urgent. I f Vladimir Putin were to decide to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, would we know ahead of launch? If so, how exactly would we know?
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