Opinion: How seriously should we take Putin’s threats of nuclear escalation?

Vladimir Putin spent more than a quarter century in the KGB — never forget that. He left as a lieutenant colonel, having worked in counterintelligence, espionage and as liaison with East Germany’s ubiquitous secret police, the Stasi. This means that intimidation, misdirection and deception run through everything he does like a thread of scarlet.

Last week Putin told reporters he was considering revising his country’s doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons so that “aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack.”

The dots are easy to join: This means that “nuclear states” like the U.S. assisting a “non-nuclear state” like Ukraine would effectively equate to a nuclear state. If that alliance then attacked Russia, Putin’s hypothetical new doctrine would consider Russia under attack by a nuclear state, and therefore justified in responding appropriately.

To be absolutely clear: Putin is saying that if America helps Ukraine attack Russia, Russia is entitled to use nuclear weapons in response.

Logically, intellectually and strategically, this is, of course, nonsense. Most of the world’s nine nuclear-armed states admit, explicitly or implicitly, that the only circumstances in which first use would be justifiable is in the face of an existential threat. In 1973, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, panic-stricken, is alleged to have argued for at least a demonstration of the country’s (still officially unverified) nuclear capability at the most precarious moment of the Yom Kippur War.

Putin is a brutal and expansionist dictator, and one should never dismiss his public pronouncements. However, his proposed radical revision of Russian nuclear doctrine has to be read alongside what he has actually done over the course of the Ukraine war.

He has frequently drawn “red lines” and warned Ukraine and its Western allies not to cross them, on pain of nuclear escalation. Each time, his bluff called, he has — wisely and pragmatically — stepped back from that brink.

On the day of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin addressed the Russian people and argued that the U.S. had already crossed the red line of attempting to “contain” Russia, representing a threat to the “very existence of our state and to its sovereignty.” He then warned against outside interference to assist Ukraine, or the West would face consequences “such as you have never seen in your entire history.”

Russian nuclear forces were put on high alert, but the West sent military and financial assistance to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s embattled government anyway. Putin did not escalate the conflict.

In September 2022, Putin ordered a partial mobilization of his armed forces, and again raised the specter of nuclear escalation. “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people — this is not a bluff.” This was perhaps a more flexible criterion. But Ukrainian forces crossed the border into Russia in Kursk Oblast in August, and there has — wisely and pragmatically — been no nuclear response.

Putin’s latest red line, therefore, is nothing new. The war in Ukraine has been going on in its current form for two-and-a-half years (though it is more than 10 years since Russia illegally annexed Crimea), and the Russian president has not resorted to nuclear weapons, either tactical or strategic. He knows, and Western policymakers are gradually realizing, that any threat diminishes in power every time it is issued but unfulfilled. It would be optimistic to say that Russia is currently losing this war, but it is not winning it, either.

Let’s step back for a moment and assess the situation. Putin anticipated defeating Ukraine in a 10-day military operation in 2022, then rapidly occupying his defeated rival and annexing it entirely by August. The FSB, Russia’s principal security agency and the successor of Putin’s KGB, was so confident of success that its leadership had begun choosing a partments to occupy in Kyiv. Instead, an estimated 600,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded , and 40 percent of Russian public expenditure is devoted to sustaining the war.

Nuclear weapons exist primarily for deterrence rather than active use. Putin hopes that his latest rattling of the nuclear saber will make the West cautious and tentative in its support for Ukraine, and thereby limit Ukraine’s offensive capabilities. Like an animal displaying aggression, it is an indication of weakness rather than a display of strength. The chance of Russia crossing the nuclear threshold because Ukraine suddenly strikes targets, say, 200 miles beyond the border rather than 100 with Western-supplies missiles is slender.

Putin’s fundamental doctrine remains that of most nuclear powers: a first strike is almost unthinkable, and would only enter consideration in the face of a genuinely existential threat. If Ukrainian forces were 50 miles outside Moscow, perhaps Putin’s finger might twitch on the trigger. But intimidation and misdirection are straight from the spook’s playbook: KGB Colonel Putin may not go nuclear, but he will be happy for the West to think he might, if it means that we hold back in our support for Ukraine.

Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

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