Putin yet to find replacement for nuclear threats – The Washington Post

The Kremlin has started realising that the West is not succumbing to nuclear threats and Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been seeking new ways to enforce his red lines.

Source: The Washington Post

Details: At the beginning of September, Putin warned that if the West approved Ukraine's strikes deep into Russia, it would mean Moscow was at war with NATO. Therefore, Russian propagandists began threatening the use of nuclear weapons again.

However, within the Kremlin, there is a growing understanding that the repeated use of nuclear threats is starting to lose its effectiveness, as Moscow's red lines are continuously being crossed. Analysts and officials close to Russian diplomats indicate that instead, Putin is seeking a more measured and limited response from the West if it allows Ukraine to use longer-range missiles to strike Russia.

"There has been an overflow of nuclear threats," said a Russian official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. "There is already immunity to such statements, and they don’t frighten anyone." 

A Russian academic with close ties to senior Russian diplomats concurred, calling the nuclear option "the least possible" scenario, "because it really would lead to dissatisfaction among Russia’s partners in the Global South and also because clearly, from a military point of view, it is not very effective".

"All this discussion of the nuclear threshold overexaggerates the threat of such a type of escalation and underestimates the possibility of alternative options," the academic added. "Since the West has a global military infrastructure… a lot of vulnerable points can be found."

Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of France-based political consultancy R-Politik, believes that Putin is exploring various options to curb Western support for Ukraine and to try to ensure that his red lines are respected. "There are options he doesn’t want to deploy, and there are options he is ready to review today," she said, noting that he views nuclear weapons as the "worst option for everyone including for himself".

Nuclear measures or a direct attack on NATO territory would only be considered if "Putin feels there is a threat to the existence of Russia in its current form, when he considers there is no other way out," she stated. "For such a situation, the West should go a lot further than what it is discussing now."

Russian officials already seem somewhat reassured by the apparent hesitation of the US regarding lifting restrictions on Ukraine's strikes against military targets deep within Russia using Western missiles. Analysts and officials said there was an increasing expectation that if permission is granted, it will be "very limited".

However, Putin is still under pressure to respond in some way and to prevent the ongoing crossing of his red lines.

"There is an understanding that the red lines drawn by Moscow are being ignored by the West, and there should be weightier and more significant steps from Moscow to demonstrate the seriousness of its intentions," the academic said.

Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College in London, supposed that Moscow could respond with sabotage operations against military facilities or other infrastructure in the West, where Russia's involvement would be hard to prove. It might also turn to proxy groups already fighting against Western interests, such as the Houthi militia in Yemen, which attacks vessels in the Red Sea.

"He doesn’t want to turn into anything dramatic or drastic, in the sense of nuclear, or direct fighting between our troops and his troops, but [that] doesn’t mean to say that there’s not something serious going on," Freedman stated.

Kremlin-affiliated political scientist Sergei Markov said that, among the upper echelons of the Russian military, there is a growing awareness that "Russia has spoiled the West, and that we have spoken a lot about red lines but we haven’t done anything. At some point we will have to escalate."

Markov suggested that possible responses could include closing the UK embassy in Moscow and striking air bases in Poland and Romania, where F-16 fighters deployed by Ukraine are based. "Since Russia is sure that at some point strikes on Moscow will definitely happen, then we need to hit first," he said.

Markov added that Putin might try to ramp up threatening rhetoric and play the "golden card", escalating tensions ahead of the elections. "If Putin escalates, then the US will fear nuclear war and Trump will win."

Freedman also noted that Putin's nuclear threats are deliberately ambiguous to heighten the sense of danger. "It sounds menacing, but he never actually is very specific about what he’s going to do. He allows us to make our own interpretations, and people interpret the worst."

Stanovaya pointed out that as the effectiveness of this approach diminishes, Putin has yet to come up with a replacement and uncertainty is increasing as "no one understands" what response Putin will ultimately choose for each specific action. "I think Putin doesn’t understand either," she emphasised.

Background:

• On 22 September, the member states of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the United States, Australia, India and Japan) expressed their strong disapproval of Russia's possible use or mere threat of use of nuclear weapons.
• NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who is stepping down at the end of September, is sceptical about Putin's warning amid discussions about allowing Ukraine to launch long-range strikes against Russia.

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