Is Vladimir Putin planning to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine? The ultimate escalation seems quite far from the reality of the conflict, but its threats are part of the Russian president’s recent escalation logic.
According to Western analysts and experts, his statements on putting Russian nuclear deterrence on alert are a bluff, a dangerous game and a headlong rush that show Vladimir Putin’s frustration in the face of Ukrainian military resistance.
real fake threat
The Russian president said he had ordered to “put the deterrent forces of the Russian army on special combat alert”, triggering the strongest Western protests.
But experts point out that some of the nuclear weapons, in Russia as well as within NATO, are de facto permanently ready for use.
“They can be triggered within 10 minutes,” explains Marc Finaud, proliferation expert at the Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCSP). “Either these are warheads already attached to missiles, or they are bombs already on board” bombers and submarines.
In an article published recently in the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists”, experts Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda affirm for their part that nearly 1600 nuclear warheads are deployed and ready for use.
“Since the Russian strategic forces are still on alert, the real question is whether he has deployed more submarines or armed the bombers,” said Hans Kristensen on Twitter on Sunday.
One-upmanship
Analysts, on the other hand, evoke in unison a headlong rush in the face of the military situation.
“There is Russian frustration with the Ukrainian resistance,” said David Khalfa, researcher at the Jean Jaurès Foundation in Paris. Ultimately, the danger for it is to enter no longer into a high-intensity confrontation “but into an urban guerrilla logic, with a high probability of casualties on the side of Russian soldiers”.
Eliot A. Cohen, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, also believes that the resistance encountered by Moscow had not been sufficiently anticipated. “The fact that they don’t have air superiority is quite telling,” he told AFP. “We are beginning to see the weakness on the battlefield”, he adds, also noting “that they were not able to occupy a city and hold it”.
Political objective of the speech
In this context, and while Western aid and donations are flowing into Ukraine, Putin’s remarks appear as a desire to undermine the solidarity of his adversaries.
Putin “is kind of a gambler, someone who takes risks. He tries to test us psychologically, ”says Eliot Cohen. “The psychological aspect is capital”, confirms David Khalfa, underlining Putin’s attempt to “dissuade Westerners from going further in the economic sanctions” which have been raining down on Moscow for a few days.
According to the researcher, “everyone is rallying behind the Ukrainian flag and there is this desire to drive a wedge between the governments of the alliance and Western public opinion”. But, he adds, “in the opinion of everyone who met Putin, he isolated himself, locked into a paranoid logic. It’s a little worrying, it’s impossible to read his strategy.
The Four Principles of Russian Deterrence
The true intentions of the Russian head of state are all the more illegible as these declarations contradict the official theory of Russian deterrence.
In June 2020, recall Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda, Putin had approved the “basic principles”, with four cases justifying the use of nuclear fire: firing of ballistic missiles against Russia or an ally, the use of a nuclear weapon by an adversary, an attack on a Russian nuclear weapons site, or an aggression involving “the very existence of the state”.
Nothing like that happens today.
“The risk of a skid always exists”
As for its international positioning, Russia had signed in January, with the four other permanent members of the UN Security Council (United States, China, France and Great Britain) a document recognizing that “a nuclear war could be won” and insisting that these weapons “as long as they exist, must serve defensive purposes, deterrence and prevention of war”.
Putin’s remarks bear witness to “the ambiguity, if not the hypocrisy of this type of statement”, regrets Marc Finaud. “If we apply the doctrine, we are massively moving towards disarmament. But we see that little has been done in this direction. Even if the apocalypse is anything but written in Ukraine, “there is always a risk of slippage, misinterpretation”, or even manipulation”, recalls the expert. And this “risk today is very high”.