The United Nations issued a warning in March 2023, as the conflict in Ukraine entered its second year, stating that the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used was higher than it had been during the worst of the Cold conflict. October 2022, five months prior, US President Joe Biden issued a warning about “the prospect of Armageddon.”
At every turn of the fight, Russia’s nuclear threats have served as the foundation. Evaluating Russia’s nuclear threats and the international reactions to them can help understand Russian signaling in the future and the implications for policy.
Although it is impossible to know for sure what Putin wants, understanding the language coming out of the Kremlin is essential to determining if nuclear weapons would be used in the future.
In order to address these concerns, throughout the first eighteen months of the invasion, the CSIS Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) collected a data set of Russian nuclear operations, including nuclear threats, as well as NATO and Western reactions. The analysis’s findings highlight three crucial stages of Russia’s nuclear posturing during the conflict, each with unique dangers, developments, and takeaways for the future.
Russia’s Nuclear position
The world’s greatest nuclear arsenal is found in Russia. About 4,489 active nuclear warheads were in Russia’s nuclear arsenal as of May 2023, ready for use on a variety of non-strategic delivery vehicles, including bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. That being said, there are now just 1,674 deployed warheads.
Regardless of its declaratory stance, the Kremlin could control the escalation of a conflict and demonstrate its resolve by using nuclear weapons first.
The Russian nuclear doctrine outlines four potential scenarios for the use of nuclear weapons:
- receiving reliable data about ballistic missile launches
- using nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against Russia or its allies
- attacking Russian nuclear command, control, and communications infrastructure, and
- threatening the existence of the Russian state with conventional weapons.
The uncertainties in Russian doctrine and Putin’s potential use of nuclear weapons have been topics of extensive discussion among experts for a long time.
These discussions were mostly scholarly until February 2022, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine has made them more urgent. Whether Putin distinguishes between the Russian state and his own interests is a crucial topic.