Despite the lack of any indication that Russia is genuinely considering use of nuclear weapons, it is of course important to consider circumstances under which its plans may change in the future. If Putin decides that threats are not sufficient to achieve his objectives and he in fact wishes to order a genuine nuclear strike,
it is reasonable to assume that he will be presented with a range of options for doing so by his military commanders, and that these options will include an assessment of the likely outcomes – including what the strike would actually achieve. In other words, conditions for using a nuclear weapon would include an assessment by the Russian military that doing so will meet one or more specific objectives. This section therefore considers the various benefits that Putin, or those advising him, could perceive in nuclear use, in order to assess the conditions under which the threat of an actual nuclear strike could become more probable.
‘Victory’
The necessity for Russia to maintain a narrative of victory in Ukraine, despite the reality of military reverses, could in itself provide a stimulus for nuclear use. A nuclear strike could be ordered if there is no longer any possibility of claiming conventional victory and a powerful destructive attack on Ukraine is perceived as the only means of avoiding admission of a clear defeat.
This likelihood has been undermined by Russia’s continuing willingness and ability to redefine at will its declared war aims. These have shifted over time from ‘denazification’ and regime change in Kyiv to far more limited goals. Throughout, the definition of ‘victory’ has been sufficiently malleable and ambiguous that even the total withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory could be presented as ‘mission accomplished’ if desired. For the Kremlin, it is essential to project that it is in control and has a plan. In conditions of close control of the domestic information space, the fact that the plan is enigmatic and unpredictable is not a serious handicap.
Even the supposed ‘annexation’ by Russia of portions of Ukraine on 30 September 2022 does not appear to have substantially reduced this leeway. Early claims that these territories would be treated as integral parts of Russia, and that Ukrainian attacks on them would be considered a threat to Russia as a whole, have not persisted. Even the potential scenario of the full liberation of the ‘annexed’ territories by Ukraine would still be very remote from the existential threat to Russia as a whole that, according to formal declaratory policy, forms the core criterion for a Russian nuclear first strike.
Escalation/intimidation
As noted above, and with the exception of extreme cases referred to elsewhere in this paper like German chancellor Olaf Scholz or French president Emmanuel Macron, rhetorical nuclear threats by Russia steadily lost their effect in the first year of its war against Ukraine. But Russia could also see a ‘demonstration’ nuclear strike as a means of attempting to intimidate Ukraine into surrender, or the West into dropping its support for Kyiv, through the prospect of further and more powerful strikes.
This possibility has to be balanced against the fact that the opportunity to use nuclear intimidation to settle the outcome of the Ukraine conflict – akin to the ‘fait accompli strategy’ widely discussed in preceding years – may have passed as swiftly as Russian hopes of immediate victory. As pointed out by Jyri Lavikainen:
Furthermore, the astonishing resilience demonstrated to date by the Ukrainian state and people argues strongly that a demonstrative strike would risk not achieving its aim of terrorizing Kyiv into suing for peace, and instead only harden Ukraine’s resolve to fight on.
Some analysts have in addition argued convincingly that the period in which the Russian military placed primary emphasis on non-strategic nuclear weapons as a war-winning or war-ending tool, in the context of a weaker Russian conventional force, has now passed. Lydia Wachs, of Germany’s SWP think-tank, states that:
Detailed analysis by a team of researchers at RAND suggests that Russia believes it is developing its extremely long-range conventional strike capabilities sufficiently to be able in future ‘to terminate the conflict prior to nuclear escalation’. Unlike Russia’s Ground Forces, significant elements of these capabilities remain largely untapped in Russia’s war against Ukraine to date – although, as Wachs also notes, this dynamic may be challenged as Russia digs deeper into its range of capabilities for inflicting damage on Ukraine.
But the option of victory through intimidation should also be assessed in the broader context of other escalatory tactics available to Russia both within Ukraine itself and targeting its support base. Within Ukraine, these include attacks on civilian targets and critical infrastructure. Russia pivoted to missile attacks on major towns and cities as early as the fifth day of the conflict, once it became clear that the original plan to capture Kyiv had failed, in order to reinforce its demands at peace talks that were then under way in Belarus. Outside Ukraine, Russia has tried to undermine support for Ukraine through its ability to block critical supply chains for energy, food and fertilizers, triggering an inflation crisis and threatening world hunger (accompanied by constant language pointing to possible nuclear use). There are indications, too, of an ongoing search for other threats against the West – or potentially other actual avenues of escalation – including highlighting Russia’s capacity to attack civilian satellites.
If Russia wants to intimidate or blackmail Ukraine and its backers, over and above the ongoing conventional campaign, it has plenty of choices for escalation other than nuclear weapons.
In fact, if Russia wants to intimidate or blackmail Ukraine and its backers, over and above the ongoing conventional campaign, it has plenty of choices for escalation other than nuclear weapons. Each of these choices presents Russia with its own specific set of benefits, challenges and inevitable adverse consequences. A broader campaign of cyberattacks is just one example. Russia has not attempted to fully leverage its reserves of cyber power to target, or threaten, countries other than Ukraine, where cyber conflict has been relatively contained. Another example is the potential for direct threats to the lives of Ukraine’s citizens, including children, who have been abducted to Russia during the conflict. Chemical, biological and radiological attacks on Ukraine or its supporters have not yet been reported in contexts directly linked to the war. In short, Russia should only be expected to turn to nuclear use once other levers available to it – i.e. ones that are less likely to bring repercussions as serious as those to be expected in response to a nuclear strike – have been used, and have become (or are shown to be) unsatisfactory.
Following doctrine
As noted above, it has been argued that President Putin’s address on 21 September 2022 represented an adjustment to Russian nuclear policy. The specific claim was that declaratory policy on when nuclear weapons can be used had been explicitly expanded from the ambiguous – but nonetheless very limited – criteria laid out in published doctrine, to now include a threat to Russia’s territorial integrity as a justification for nuclear use. That territorial integrity was assumed to extend to areas ‘annexed’ from Ukraine.
This interpretation was implausible on two grounds. First, as is common in response to comments by Putin, it conflated intimidatory language with genuine intent, notwithstanding the long history of threats of this kind from Putin proving hollow and having no impact on Russian actions in reality. Second, Russia’s responses to attacks on Ukrainian territory that it claims as its own had already been tested. Despite earlier concerns that an attack on Russian-annexed Crimea might trigger a nuclear response, Ukrainian strikes on the peninsula and into the Belgorod region of Russia clearly demonstrated that Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s illegally annexed territory, or indeed on Russia itself, do not automatically trigger escalatory retaliation of any kind, let alone nuclear. And while Putin claimed, implausibly, that the wave of Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure on 10–11 October 2022 were in direct response to damage inflicted by Ukraine on the bridge linking Russia with Crimea across the Kerch Strait, this in itself showed that Russia has other courses of action that it can present as retaliatory strikes but which fall far short of escalation to nuclear use.
This is not to say that there will never be a threshold or culminating point at which sudden or cumulative damage to Russia itself is considered sufficiently serious or dangerous that it leads to a nuclear response. Neither does it mean that the views of Russia’s armed forces on nuclear use completely rule out the war in Ukraine as a potential trigger. For instance, it is within ‘regional wars’ that Russian strategists conceptualize a transition from the use of strategic conventional weapons to non-strategic nuclear weapons. Furthermore, as noted by Kristin Ven Bruusgaard: ‘Russian military doctrine provides little guidance for the situation Russia currently faces in Ukraine because the same doctrine declares that Russian conventional forces should be able to win this kind of war.’
There also remains the possibility of a major threat to Russian sovereignty arising by indirect means, precipitating the kind of existential concern that among the expert community is a more widely accepted probable trigger for Russian nuclear use. This could come about if, for example, defeats for Russia in a conflict bring about a major collapse of the armed forces, leading in turn to severe domestic unrest and instability. But strikes by Ukraine on individual targets within Russia, with or without the capability being provided by Kyiv’s Western backers to deliver them, should not be expected to meet those criteria. In any case, even after potential depletion of its supplies of long-range missiles, as noted above Russia still holds in reserve a substantial range of options for escalatory retaliation before resorting to nuclear use. Crucially, none of these other options would incur the same kind of consequences for Russia itself as nuclear use, as discussed further below.
Destructive effect
The majority of open-source analysis of the likely impact of use of non-strategic nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine concurs that their actual military utility is strictly limited, unless fired in substantial salvoes. Relatively dispersed military targets mean that the benefit of a small nuclear strike over conventional weapons is incremental, and would in no way offer a rationale for the substantial escalation that this would represent.
This, however, leaves open the option of an attack on non-military targets, such as critical civilian infrastructure, major populated areas, or a demonstration strike over water that causes minimal initial damage and casualties. This last category of attack overlaps with the possibility of a nuclear strike that Russia might opt to deliver not in spite of, but because of, its shock value and destructive capacity. In the autumn of 2022, Russia responded to reverses on the battlefield with intensification of the missile campaign against critical civilian infrastructure or residential areas in Ukraine, and in multiple cases the intent appeared to be arbitrary and punitive rather than to achieve or facilitate any specific war aim. One or more nuclear strikes could form part of a vindictive response intended simply to cause misery and destruction in Ukraine in recognition of Russian failure to conquer it – the rationale being that if Russia can’t have Ukraine, nobody can. This would mirror, on a vastly greater scale, the behaviour of individual Russian soldiers and units when presented with the reality of life in Ukraine, where rather than aspiring to it themselves they seek to destroy it – a response summarized by some Russians as ne pobedim, tak nagadim (‘if you can’t beat it, befoul it’).
