New nuclear threats from Putin, timed for a moment of fear

President Vladimir V. Putin has threatened to intervene in Russia’s nuclear weapons arsenal on three occasions in the past two years: once at the start of the war against Ukraine two years ago, once as he was losing ground, and again Thursday while he feels he is undermining Ukrainian defense and American resolve.

In both cases, the sabre-rattling has served the same basic purpose. Mr Putin knows that his opponents – led by President Biden – are primarily afraid of an escalation of the conflict. Even the bluster over the move to nuclear energy reminds Putin’s many opponents of the risks of going too far.

But Mr Putin’s equivalent of a State of the Union address on Thursday also featured some notable new elements. He not only indicated that he was redoubling his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. He also made clear that he had no intention of renegotiating the last major arms control treaty in force with the United States — a treaty that expires in less than two years — unless the new deal will determine the fate of Ukraine, one of which a large part probably lies in Russian hands. hands.

Some call it nuclear chess, others nuclear blackmail. Implicit in Putin’s insistence that nuclear controls and the survival of the Ukrainian state must be decided together is the threat that the Russian leader would like to see all current restrictions on strategic weapons deployed lapse. That would give him the freedom to use as many nuclear weapons as he wants.

And while Mr. Putin said he had no interest in a new arms race that would bankrupt the Soviet Union, the implication was that the United States and Russia, already in a perpetual state of confrontation, would return to the worst competition of the Cold War. War.

“We are dealing with a state,” he said, referring to the United States, “whose ruling circles are taking openly hostile actions against us. So?”

“Are they seriously going to discuss issues of strategic stability with us,” he added, using the term for agreements on nuclear controls, “while at the same time trying to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia, as they say? the battlefield?”

With these comments, Putin underlined one of the distinctive and most disturbing aspects of the war in Ukraine. Time and again, its senior military officials and strategists have discussed the use of nuclear weapons as the logical next step if their conventional forces prove inadequate on the battlefield, or if they need to deter Western intervention.

That strategy is in accordance with Russian military doctrine. And in the early days of the war in Ukraine, it clearly frightened the Biden administration and NATO allies in Europe, who hesitated to supply long-range missiles, tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine for fear it would provoke a nuclear response or lead Russia . to penetrate NATO territory beyond the borders of Ukraine.

A second fear about Russia’s possible use of nuclear weapons, in October 2022, stemmed not only from Mr Putin’s statements, but also from US intelligence reports suggesting that nuclear weapons could be used on the battlefield against Ukrainian military bases. After a few tense weeks, the crisis was over.

In the year and a half since, Mr. Biden and his allies have gradually become more confident that despite all of Mr. Putin’s blunders, he did not want to take on NATO and its forces. But whenever the Russian leader calls on his nuclear powers, it always causes a wave of fear that, if pushed too far, he might actually try to demonstrate his willingness to detonate a weapon, perhaps at some point. remote location, to get his opponents to Thunder on.

“In this environment, Putin could again engage in nuclear ratcheting, and it would be foolish to dismiss escalating risks entirely,” William J. Burns, the CIA director and a former U.S. ambassador to Russia when Mr. Putin came to power for the first time, recently wrote in Foreign Affairs. “But it would be just as foolish to be unnecessarily intimidated by them.”

In his speech, Putin portrayed Russia as the injured state and not the aggressor. “They themselves choose targets to attack our territory,” he said. “They started talking about the possibility of sending NATO military contingents to Ukraine.”

That possibility existed raised by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, this week. While most NATO allies talk about helping Ukraine defend itself, he said: “Russia’s defeat is indispensable for the security and stability of Europe.” But the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine was there fired immediately by the United States, Germany and other countries. (Mr. Macron played right into Mr. Putin’s hands, some analysts say, by exposing divisions among allies.)

However, Mr Putin may have sensed that this was a particularly ripe moment to test the depth of the West’s concerns. Former President Donald J. Trump’s recent statement that Russia could do “whatever they want” to a NATO country that has not contributed sufficiently to the alliance’s collective defense and that he would not respond resonated deeply across Europe. The same goes for Congress’s refusal so far to supply more weapons to Ukraine.

The Russian leader may also have responded to speculation that the United States, concerned that Ukraine is on its way to losing, could supply longer-range missiles to Kiev or seize the long-frozen $300 billion in Russian assets now held in Western banks . and hand it over to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to buy more weapons.

Whatever triggered him, Putin’s message was clear: He sees victory in Ukraine as an existential battle, central to his grander plan to restore the glory of the days when Peter the Great ruled at the height of the Russian Empire . And once a battle is viewed as a war of survival rather than a war of choice, the leap to discussing the use of nuclear weapons is short.

He is betting that the United States will move in the opposite direction and become increasingly isolationist, unwilling to act against Russian threats and certainly not interested in confronting Russian nuclear threats as Presidents John F. Kennedy Jr. did. in 1962 or Ronald. Reagan did that in the last days of the Soviet Union.

The fact that the current Republican leadership, which had enthusiastically supplied weapons to Ukraine during the first year and a half of the war, has now heeded Trump’s calls to cut that flow is perhaps the best news that has put Putin in two years received. year.

“Every time the Russians return to the nuclear chatter, it is a sign of their recognition that they still don’t have the conventional military capability they thought they had,” Ernest J. Moniz, the former Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration and now the CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which works to reduce nuclear and biological threats, said in an interview Thursday.

“But that means their nuclear posture is something they rely on more and more,” he said. And “that increases the risk.”