American officials were unsurprised to learn that Moscow had updated its nuclear doctrine following President Joe Biden's decision to allow Ukraine to fire US-provided long-range missiles into Russia. According to a US official, Russia had been signaling its intent to update its doctrine for several weeks.
As of now, the US has not observed any updates to Russia's nuclear posture and therefore sees no reason to change its stance. The official described Russia's actions as 'irresponsible rhetoric' that has been ongoing for the past two years.
Under the updated doctrine, Moscow will now consider aggression from any non-nuclear state, in collaboration with a nuclear country, as a joint attack on Russia. The Kremlin announced that the revised military doctrine would theoretically lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.
In a previous 2020 update to the nuclear doctrine, Putin stated that Moscow reserved the right to use nuclear weapons when the state's very existence was threatened. However, the recent changes outlined in September of this year appeared to lower that threshold further, indicating that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons when facing a 'critical threat to its sovereignty.'
