THE WASHINGTON POST: Russia’s nuclear doctrine to include attacks on nonnuclear states

Russian President Vladimir Putin made a fresh nuclear threat against the West and Ukraine on Wednesday, indicating that any nation’s conventional attack on Russia that was supported by a nuclear power would be perceived as a joint attack.

At a meeting with the Russian Security Council, Putin said that in light of an “emergence of new sources of military threats and risks for Russia and our allies,” specialists from the Defense Ministry and other government agencies had conducted a year-long, in-depth review of the country’s nuclear doctrine.

“The updated version of the document proposes that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear-weapon state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear-weapon state, should be considered as a joint attack on the Russian Federation,” Putin told the council.

He said the conditions for the launch of Russia’s nuclear weapons would be “reliable information about a massive launch of aerospace attack means and their crossing of our state border.”

He added, “We reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression against Russia and Belarus.”

The announcement comes after a flurry of nuclear-related threats from Russian officials in the face of Ukrainian requests to the United States and other allies to lift restrictions on weapons. Currently, Ukraine is not allowed to use longer-range missiles supplied by its allies against targets deep inside Russia.

Ukraine is a nonnuclear state that has received military support from the United States and other nuclear-armed countries since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Analysts and officials close to senior Russian diplomats have dismissed many of the threats to use nuclear weapons as impractical, as Putin casts about for other ways of confronting Ukraine’s Western support.

In recent years, dialogue between Moscow and Washington on nuclear arms control has all but ground to a halt, while the use of nuclear blackmail has spiraled. Since the invasion, calls from inside Russia for nuclear strikes on Europe and Ukraine have grown louder, but there is a growing understanding in the international community that these amount to little more than intimidation and threats.

“Nuclear threats have become routine for the Kremlin. Every time Kyiv is supplied with new weapons, is given permission to use Western arms to strike Russian territory, or attacks Russia’s missile warning systems, Moscow resorts to nuclear threats,” nuclear expert Maxim Starchak wrote in a recent analysis for the Carnegie Endowment. “With nuclear blackmail, Moscow is trying to recreate the world order that prevailed in the second half of the twentieth century.”

Russian propagandists and officials, however, were quick to reinforce Putin’s statements.

Speaking to Russian state media, Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Defense Committee in the State Duma, or lower house of parliament, said the proposed changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine “will allow it to become more flexible and effective.”

“The changes were made to ensure that the doctrine corresponds to the realities of today,” Kartapolov added.

Writing on Telegram, Russian propagandist Sergey Markov said the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons had now been lowered and predicted that it would be easier for Russia to deploy such weapons. “Generally speaking, this means that Russia under the new doctrine can now use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Ukraine’s aggression in Kursk region is there. There is support of nuclear U.S., Britain and France. So it is already possible to hit Kyiv with nuclear weapons,” Markov said.

Markov added that Moscow had been pushed to alter its nuclear doctrine by “the threat of the West’s full escalation of the war against Russia.”

A Russian academic close to senior Russian diplomats, whom The Washington Post is not identifying so the person could speak freely on sensitive matters, said the amendments would increase the flexibility of the doctrine and, “in an sense, expand” it.

“It seems to me that an element of uncertainty will be preserved so as to increase the level of flexibility. But … since using nuclear weapons in case of attacks similar to the one in Kursk will be accompanied by significant negative side effects, this can be hardly justified from a military point of view,” the academic said.

The academic said that the timing of Putin’s announcement was no coincidence, and a clear “signal” to the West, but that “there is still a large selection of options for escalation.”

“The nuclear option is not the preferred one,” the academic said.

Meanwhile, Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political analyst and former speechwriter for Putin, called the president’s statement “a real disgrace.”

“They have again indicated that they no longer expect to defeat Ukraine with conventional weapons,” Gallyamov wrote on Telegram.

Pavel Podvig, an analyst based in Geneva who runs the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, told The Post that the amendments were designed to create “uncertainty and ambiguity about the possibility of a response,” and described the previous version of the doctrine as being regarded by many in Russia as “fairly restrictive.”

“Overall, it is a message that is designed to kind of warn the West, in this case, that the kind of assistance that is being discussed right now could be, could be problematic,” he said.

Podvig added that Putin’s remarks would trigger more questions about the definition of an attack against Russia and would “have people guessing, and have people be cautious about anything that would kind of resemble this.”

As the West has deliberated over whether to approve the use of its long-range missiles for Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, there have been hints that Moscow was considering updating its nuclear doctrine.

In June, Putin said Russia’s nuclear doctrine was a “living instrument” that could change in line with world events. And earlier this month, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian state media that Moscow would make changes to its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons in response to what it sees as Western escalation in the war in Ukraine.

“The work is at an advanced stage, and there is a clear intent to make corrections,” Ryabkov told the Russian state news agency Tass.

The previous nuclear doctrine, set out in a 2020 decree by Putin, stated that Russia could use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.

Russian hawks and military analysts have long urged Putin to lower the threshold for nuclear weapons to “sober up” Russia’s enemies in the West.

Sergei Karaganov, a Russian political scientist and foreign policy hawk who has pushed Putin to adopt a stronger nuclear stance, told the Kommersant newspaper earlier this month that Russia could launch a localized nuclear strike on a NATO country without sparking an all-out nuclear war.

The main aim of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, he said, “should be to ensure that all current and future enemies are sure that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons.”

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