The president Vladimir Putin on Tuesday lowered Russia’s threshold for use of nuclear weaponsa long-planned measure whose timing seemed designed to show that the Kremlin could respond aggressively to Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory with American missiles.
The decree signed by Putin put into practice a revised version of the Russian nuclear doctrine which he described in televised statements in September. However, the timing of its promulgation sent quite a message, coming just two days after President Biden authorized Ukraine’s use of long missiles scope supplied by the United States to attack inside Russia.
Asked whether Russia could respond with nuclear weapons to such attacks, Dmitri S. PeskovPutin’s spokesman, repeated the language of the new doctrine, according to which Russia “reserves the right” to use such weapons to respond to an attack with conventional weapons that creates a “critical threat” to its “sovereignty and territorial integrity.” .
The Russian Defense Ministry later announced that Kiev had used the ballistic missiles known as Army Tactical Missile Systemor ATACMS, in a pre-dawn attack on an ammunition depot in southwestern Russia. A senior U.S. and another Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations, confirmed that the attacks used ATACMSwhich have a range of 306 kilometers, the longest of all the munitions the West has provided to Ukraine.
The White House downplayed Putin’s new doctrine. In a statement issued by the National Security Councilthe White House noted that it had not observed “any change in Russia’s nuclear posture.”
The new doctrine, posted Tuesday on the Kremlin’s website, differs from the previous iteration in at least two important ways that show how Putin is trying to use the threat of its nuclear arsenal to dissuade the United States from continuing to support Ukraine.
First, it raises the possibility that nuclear weapons could be used against a weaponized country that does not directly launch an attack on Russia, but supports one by a non-nuclear country. This is a clear reference to Ukraine and those who support it with nuclear weapons, led by the United States. Previous Russian nuclear doctrine focused on responding to attacks by nuclear-armed countries and alliances.
Second, it lowers the threshold at which Russia could consider nuclear use in response to an attack with conventional weapons. The previous doctrine, published in 2020, said that such an attack had to threaten “the very existence of the state”, while the new one places that threshold in a “critical threat” to Russia’s sovereignty.
The release of the doctrine on Tuesday appeared to be the Kremlin’s latest suggestion that Russia could use nuclear weapons to respond to attacks by Ukraine carried out with American support, and that the response could be directed against American facilities as well as Ukraine itself. .
“Aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies by any non-nuclear State with the participation or support of a nuclear State is considered as their joint attack”says the document.
Peskov, speaking on his daily conference call with reporters, pointed to this section of the revised doctrine, saying, “this is also a very important paragraph.”
“Nuclear deterrence aims to ensure that a potential adversary understands the inevitability of retaliation in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies.”Peskov said.
In the National Security Council statement, the White House said it was “not surprised” by the new decree, as Putin had flagged the change months ago.
“This is more of the same irresponsible rhetoric from Russia that we have seen over the past two years.”the statement said. The White House did not link the lifting of restrictions on Ukraine to Putin’s announcement.
Western officials have previously said they would be more concerned about Moscow using nuclear weapons if the Russian military is against it, and at the moment the war in Ukraine largely appears to be going Putin’s way.
On the battlefield, Russian forces are advancing in eastern Ukraine, while kyiv struggles with recruiting and morale. And in geopolitics, Putin has also been gaining ground: his phone call last week with the German chancellor Olaf Scholz broke two years of diplomatic isolation by major Western countries, while the election of Donald Trump as incoming president of the United States has raised hopes in Russia for a peace agreement in Ukraine on the Kremlin’s terms.
From the first day of his invasion of ukraine In February 2022, Putin has sought to use the threat of Russia’s massive nuclear arsenal to deter the West from providing military aid to Ukraine. It has had only limited success, as the United States leads a coalition that has sent tens of billions of dollars in modern tanks, artillery systems and missiles.
But Putin has tried to draw a new red line by using Ukraine to use Western missiles to attack Russian territory. To the frustration of Ukrainian officials, President Joe Biden had long refused to allow the weapons to be used in such a way, given what US officials said was the risk of a violent response from Putin and the impact limited that the use of those missiles could have on the battlefield.
But Biden recently changed course after Russia’s surprise decision to incorporate north korean soldiers to the fight, U.S. officials said.
In September, Putin warned that if the United States and its allies allowed Ukraine to fire missiles into Russia, they would put his country “at war” with the I’LL TAKE. Ukraine has used domestically made weapons to attack at greater distances.
In the run-up to Biden’s decision, some U.S. officials said they feared Ukraine’s use of the missiles across the border could prompt Putin to retaliate with force against the United States and its coalition partners. . Other U.S. officials said they thought those fears were exaggerated.
In response to Biden’s recent decision, Russian officials have warned in some of their strongest statements to date about the risk of a nuclear war. On Tuesday, Andrei Kartopolovhead of the defense committee of the lower house of the Russian parliament, said that Biden “will slam the lid on his own coffin and drag many, many more people down with him”.
The question now is whether Putin sees a strategic advantage in escalating his conflict with the United States — even by non-nuclear means — given Trump’s imminent return to the White House.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, described the situation in
But some analysts continued to predict that, given Trump’s stated goal of ending the war quickly, Putin’s most rational course would be to avoid any action that would further escalate his conflict with the United States.
A Moscow-based analyst whose organization is close to the Russian government said that while Ukraine’s ATACMS attacks were unlikely to change the course of the war, an aggressive response against the United States “will create problems for Trump.”
“It will be harder for him to turn the situation around if that’s what he wants to do,” the analyst said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment to Western media.
© The New York Times 2024.
