Putin has indicated that he intends to defend his conquests in Ukraine with nuclear weapons if necessary. This gives his war a new character. Ever since he started it, experts have wondered if and how the president could escalate to nuclear power if he loses militarily. Several scenarios were considered, from nuclear alerts over the sea to the use of small bombs in forested areas.
Now Putin has chosen a method of nuclear escalation with which he has had success before. When he conquered Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, he secured it by declaring it Russian territory. From this he derived the right to set up nuclear weapons there. Putin later said he was ready at the time to put Russia’s nuclear forces on standby. Later, Soviet nuclear weapons storage facilities were apparently restored in Crimea. Since then, it has been clear that for Moscow, the peninsula is part of what experts call the “sanctuary,” that is, part of the area that a nuclear power must defend at all costs if it is to remain credible. Since then, no one in the West has dared to see retaking Crimea as an option.
The example has been analyzed in NATO. After Russia stole the peninsula, Western generals considered whether the “Crimea model”—rapid capture of a poorly protected area, then nuclear threat to prevent a counteroffensive—could also pose a problem for the alliance. At that time they identified a weak point in the Baltic States. They are only connected to the rest of NATO by a narrow border with Poland. But they have a long border line with Russia and Belarus in the east, south and west. Leading Western military officials therefore warned that NATO was so weak in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that Russia could overrun them in the first phase of the war, which only lasted a few days. Because of the long supply lines, the alliance would then not be able to provide timely assistance, and if it did set up a recapturing force in phase two, Moscow would stop it in phase three by threatening nuclear weapons.
Blackmail is supposed to secure what has been conquered
Now Putin is applying this pattern in southern Ukraine. The first phase, the conquest of parts of the Ukrainian regions of Cherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia, is behind him. The second phase is underway: the attacked country, Ukraine, has launched a counterattack with Western help. That is why Russia has now begun the third phase: nuclear blackmail, designed to secure what it has conquered.
Because that is the actual purpose of the current Blitz annexation: it is intended to underline the nuclear threat in a critical phase of the war. For if southern Ukraine is declared Russian, Moscow’s military doctrine makes defending it with nuclear weapons a real option. If, as a next step, Putin were to move parts of his nuclear force to the occupied territory, that would be an act of self-commitment: he could no longer withdraw without making the nuclear deterrent, the core of Russia’s sense of world power, implausible.
If Putin gets away with it, the “Crimea model” including nuclear blackmail would have proved successful again. That would have consequences. Wherever a neighbor shows Russia’s weakness, Putin could use this model: in Georgia, in Moldova, but why not in Finland too? The Inspector General of the German Armed Forces pointed this out.
That would be unacceptable for NATO. What Putin is doing now is not a direct use of nuclear weapons, but it is definitely an indirect one. However, NATO has consistently said that doing so would “fundamentally change” the nature of this war. That can mean many things. For example, when the alliance recognized the threat to the Baltic States, it fundamentally changed its strategy and sent troops to the eastern flank. All of this should make it clear: whoever attacks here is attacking NATO.
Now Putin is attacking a country linked to the West, with which the EU has a “deep and comprehensive” association agreement, the sovereignty of which Washington and London guaranteed in the Budapest Memorandum. And concretely, the attack is backed up with nuclear blackmail like never before. The “fundamental change” that NATO has been talking about is thus underway. The credibility of the alliance demands a response that responds to Putin’s blackmail with a new quality of strength. The Crimean model must not set a precedent.