President Vladimir Putin made a chilling declaration this week when he proposed changes to Russia’s nuclear war policies. One of the most concerning was the possibility of mobilising the country’s nuclear arsenal if another nuclear power supports a non-nuclear state’s attack on Russia. The comments marked a clear escalation in Moscow’s rhetoric, but some experts say there is a world of difference between Putin’s declarations and the hidden rules of nuclear doctrine.
Is the world approaching the brink of nuclear disaster or is Putin merely bluffing when he talks about playing the nuclear card?
The significance of Putin’s September 25 statement is not easy to decipher. Ever since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Russian leader has repeatedly threatened to bring nuclear weapons into the conflict. So much so that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – a journal on nuclear security and monitor of the Doomsday Clock – recently published yet another updated timeline of the many times Russia has escalated its nuclear talk. The first such threat can be traced to February 24, 2022 – the same day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Three new points
This time, however, the world seemed to pay more attention. In Britain, the BBC headlined with “Putin proposes new rules for using nuclear weapons” and US public broadcaster PBS declared that “Putin lowers nuclear response threshold”.
These reactions stemmed from the fact that Russia revised its nuclear doctrine to add three new points in conjunction with Putin’s speech, according to Ulrich Kuhn, head of the arms control and emerging technologies programme at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg.
In his declaration at Russia’s Security Council, Putin said that Moscow now reserves the right to use nuclear weapons if an ally – i.e., Belarus – comes under attack.
For the first time, Putin also specified what types of attacks might trigger a Russian nuclear response, saying the scope will be widened to cover any attack that poses an “existential threat” to Russia. This means that large-scale drone attacks may join long-range ballistic missile attacks in being considered triggers.
Finally, Putin announced that any nuclear power (such as the UK, France or the United States) that is seen as supporting a non-nuclear power (such as Ukraine) in conventional attacks inside Russia will be held just as responsible as the attacker, and potentially trigger a nuclear response.
This means that the supporting country could become a target in itself, said Sarah Tzinieris, a specialist in international security and nuclear non-proliferation at King's College in London.
“And not only would it be targeted, but it would also be potentially targeted with nuclear weapons," she said.
This shift could quickly turn the war in Ukraine into a global conflict.
Declaration versus doctrine
But there are some important differences that separate Putin’s declarations and the actual nuclear doctrine, which stipulates exactly when, how and why Russia can use nuclear arms.
The first is that talk does not necessarily equal action.
“This doesn't necessarily change anything strategically,” Tzinieris said. “This is very much about rhetoric."
David Blagden, a senior lecturer in international security at Britain’s University of Exeter, agreed, noting that despite the tough language, Putin is probably not any closer to pressing the nuclear button than he was before.
“To an extent, all declaratory doctrine is just cheap talk … and in this instance, Russia making such a declaration neither increases Russian capabilities nor lessens NATO’s capability to deter,” he said.
“It remains just as true that – if Moscow responded to a NATO-backed conventional strike on Russia by escalating to nuclear use – NATO could do the same to Russia.”
A day after Putin made his declaration, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was still in the process of adjusting official documents to take Putin’s comments into account. The Kremlin also announced that it reserved the right not to publish the revised nuclear doctrine.
Kuhn said that this makes it even more difficult to assess how much of a threat Putin’s declaration actually constitutes.
"Basically the question here is: Does Russia have red lines? Where are those red lines? And if those red lines are being crossed, would that mean that it would almost automatically trigger nuclear use? And the answer to all three questions is: We don't know."
Kuhn explained that the nuclear doctrine, which was established in 2014 and updated in 2020, contains two parts: One that is “declarative” and often made public and a second, top-secret part, consisting of some 100 pages that contains the specifics of when Russia can bring out its nuclear arsenal.
“So I wouldn't [be on the] lookout for the first part of that document, the declarative public part of it, in terms of gauging whether that tells us something about whether Russia is using nuclear weapons or not [because] it will probably not tell us much," he said.
A win for Russian hawks
Regardless of whether Russia will actually consider using its nuclear weapons, it did accomplish one thing: Serving up a win for the hawks in the Russian Duma (lower house). Since the summer of 2023, they have put pressure on the government to brandish the Russian nuclear threat more often and more seriously by arguing that Putin’s warnings have so far been inefficient.
But if the declaration indicates little about Putin’s intentions, what role does it serve?
To help Russia negotiate, Kuhn said.
"It's an indirect public negotiation process with Kyiv and the West, and it's about making sure that the West does not give Ukraine the right to use these long-range weapons against Russian targets.”
The fact that Putin made the declaration just as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was due to meet US President Joe Biden in Washington was no coincidence. Especially since an important point on Zelensky’s agenda was to convince Biden that the US should give Ukraine permission to use its long-range missiles in strikes on Russia.
Read moreZelensky’s ‘victory plan’: Is the war in Ukraine reaching its endgame?
“I suspect that Biden will be cautious," Tzinieris said, noting that the current geopolitical context – the soaring tensions in the Middle East and China’s increasingly aggressive behaviour towards Taiwan – now needs to be added to the equation if the US wants to avoid further disrupting a world in turmoil.
In other words, the content and timing of Putin’s declaration effectively threw quite a few spanners in the works for Zelensky during his US appeal trip.
‘A lot to lose’
But the declaration has also served a very domestic purpose, Tzinieris said. By implying that Moscow may now respond to conventional Ukrainian attacks with nuclear weapons, Putin effectively rewrapped one of his favourite messages to the Russian people: that Russia is not fighting a war against Ukraine, but against the West for which Kyiv is serving as a mere vehicle in its bid to destroy Russia.
Kuhn said that if Russia would actually decide to bring out its nuclear weapons, it “would lose a significant portion of global support that the regime in Moscow still enjoys in significant countries like China, but also countries that are sitting a bit on the fence, like India and others, and particularly countries in the Global South."
The reason for this, he said, is the global “nuclear taboo” and the fact that nuclear arms haven’t been used for the past 80 years.
On Friday, two days after Putin's declaration, Russia allies China and Brazil and a host of other countries released a joint statement saying they opposed the "use or threat" of nuclear weapons over Ukraine.
Finally, by using such weapons on Ukraine, Russia would end up nuking its own troops, Kuhn said bluntly.
Blagden said the declaration was a way for Putin to make the Russian nuclear threat more credible, both domestically and externally. This was also underscored by Kremlin spokesman Peskov, who said that it "must be considered a specific signal" by hostile countries.
Kuhn simply described it as a "classic deterrence strategy”.
“You warn the other guy that if he doesn’t change course, there will be consequences. Thus, the burden is on the other side and the warning implies that, ‘This is not in my hands anymore – this is fully in your hands; you’re responsible now…’”
The real problem, the experts said, is that if the West ignores Putin’s threat, he will appear weak. And if there is one thing authoritarian leaders dislike, it is appearing weak.
This article was adapted from the original in French.
