From Foreign Policy - World Brief

Kremlin Nuclear Scare Tactics
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual State of the Nation address.

Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons against NATO members that deploy forces to Ukraine in his annual State of the Nation address on Thursday. The more than two-hour-long speech contained one of Putin’s most explicit nuclear warnings yet against the West. “All this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and the destruction of civilization. Don’t they get that?” he said.

Putin’s comments were in reference to French President Emmanuel Macron suggesting on Monday that NATO should not rule out deploying foreign troops to Ukraine. Leaders of other Western powers, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and senior U.S. officials, quickly rejected that possibility. Putin, meanwhile, dismissed the idea that Russia would spread the conflict into other European countries, calling it “nonsense.” But he added that “tragic consequences” would occur if foreign troops were to become involved in the war.

NATO members have previously warned that Russia could test the alliance’s collective defense clause (known as Article 5) within the next three to five years. If that were to occur, experts believe that Russia might seize NATO territory in one or more of the Baltic states and then try to force NATO to back down for fear of nuclear retaliation. “If NATO acquiesces, its credibility would be destroyed for good,” Franz-Stefan Gady argued in Foreign Policy.

Leaked Russian classified intelligence revealed to the Financial Times on Wednesday showed that Russia’s threshold for using tactical nuclear weapons is lower than previously stated publicly. (Tactical nuclear weapons are designed to be used on the battlefield and are smaller than so-called strategic nuclear weapons, such as the warheads that can be put on an intercontinental ballistic missile; however, tactical nuclear weapons can still release far more energy than the weapons that the United States dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)

According to 29 secret military files created between 2008 and 2014, Russia would consider launching a nuclear strike if there was an enemy incursion on Russian soil or 20 percent of its strategic ballistic missile submarines were destroyed, among other triggers. The documents showed that Russia has rehearsed launching tactical nuclear weapons against a major power at a conflict’s early stages.

Russia’s “strategic nuclear forces are in a state of full readiness” and can hit targets in the West, Putin said on Thursday. These include the hypersonic nuclear weapons that Putin first mentioned in 2018. Last year, Moscow transferred tactical nuclear weapons to neighboring Belarus in a widely condemned move that shifted the region’s security status. And in recent weeks, reports indicated that Russia may be planning to deploy a nuclear space weapon that could destroy Western satellites.