In a July interview with the Russian magazine The International Affairs, a senior Russian diplomat, Sergei Ryabkov, argued that in light of Russia’s war in Ukraine, “nuclear deterrence in its traditional sense is not fully working.” His words echoed Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s earlier rhetoric on the possibility of conceptual changes to the country’s nuclear doctrine that could lower the threshold for the use of a small, low-yield device on the battlefield.
On August 27, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed that Moscow was “clarifying” its nuclear doctrine, the official RIA news agency reported. Lavrov’s comments came amid attempts by the Biden Administration to downplay the significance of the recent updates to the US Nuclear Weapons Employment Planning Guidance, which now recognizes the possibility of coordinated nuclear challenges from North Korea, China, and Russia.
While at least some of the Kremlin’s nuclear saber-rattling appears related to Moscow’s wartime bargaining tactics, the discourse itself provides clues about the beneath-the-surface part of Russia’s nuclear posture iceberg.
On July 31, Russia kicked off the third phase of exercises for its non-strategic nuclear forces (the previous phases occurred in May and June). During this most recent phase, Russian military personnel practiced installing dummy warheads on launch vehicles and moving them to designated areas “in preparation for electronic launches,” according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
In August, Russia unveiled its latest drone, a “Doomsday” first-person view aerial vehicle designed to monitor radiation levels in the event of a nuclear attack. According to Dmitry Kuzyakin, general director of the Center for Integrated Unmanned Solutions, the device can be operated from inside a sealed armored vehicle while on the move.
Such exercises are seen by some experts as a harbinger of a new epoch in nuclear confrontation. “We are in the advanced stages of a new [nuclear] arms race,” military analyst and veteran Israeli intelligence officer Sergei Migdal told Eurasianet.
With more than 5,500 nuclear warheads, Russia is leading the arms race at present in quantitative terms. The United States follows with over 5,044 nuclear weapons located in the US and five other nations: Italy, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and Turkey. Outgoing NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance is in talks to deploy more nuclear weapons, mulling taking them out of storage and putting them on standby.
In August 2019, Washington withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty after accusing Russia of non-compliance. Moscow responded by declaring the treaty “formally dead.”
In June, Putin called for the resumption of production and potential deployment of intermediate- and shorter-range nuclear-capable missiles. “It can take two, three, or even four years to get to mass production, even under urgent conditions. This is not the same as producing already developed Iskander or Kinzhal missile capabilities,” Migdal said. “In the 1990s, the production lines of many military plants in Russia were converted to civilian use, mothballed, or simply abandoned,” he added.
Once produced, these short- and medium-range missiles could be stationed in Belarus, the expert said. Another possible location is the Leningrad Military District, near new NATO members Finland and Sweden. Other deployment options could include the Southern Military District, with its proximity to another NATO member Turkey, and the Eastern Military District, within striking distance of US allies Japan and South Korea.
Nuclear gamble in space
Amid this new, burgeoning nuclear arms race, Russia is looking for leverage against the West to secure its war aims in Ukraine, Pavel Luzin, a visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Eurasianet.
In April, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement that according to US assessments, “Russia is developing a new satellite carrying a nuclear device.” Around the same time, Moscow killed the first-ever UN Security Council resolution concerning a potential space arms race: if it had passed, the measure would have reaffirmed members’ compliance with the Outer Space Treaty. In May, the Pentagon suspected Russia of having orbited what it called a “counter-space weapon.”
As for the nature of the device, Luzin suggested that it could be a satellite with a nuclear reactor. “Most likely an electronic warfare satellite” with a longer lifetime and an antenna to jam “constellations of satellites in multiple orbits,” he said.
Migdal theorized that it could be a “nuclear warhead launched into space as a component of a satellite with appropriate shielding against cosmic radiation and a protected communication channel with the command-and-control center.” The design could be reminiscent of the Soviet Fractional Orbital Bombardment System developed in the 1960s, he said, adding that “the warhead could be dropped from orbit into enemy territory.”
Other options are plausible, he added, including a “reconnaissance satellite with an isotope reactor” or a “nuclear reactor-powered killer satellite” with space “torpedoes” to destroy rival satellite constellations.
A return to nuclear weapons testing?
The two cornerstone documents governing Moscow’s use of nuclear weapons are Russia’s military doctrine and the unclassified “Foundations of State Policy in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence.”
At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June, Putin connected possible changes to the country’s military doctrine with “testing of nuclear weapons.” So far, Russia has used computer simulations for this purpose. “Possible changes could mean resuming underground or atmospheric tests to show that nuclear weapons are operational,” Migdal said. From Moscow’s point of view, this “would impress London, Berlin and Washington,” he added.
In October 2023, Russia withdrew its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a pact rejected by the US Senate in 1999. Several Minuteman III missile flight tests are conducted each year. In 2023, a missile test silo was built at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, presumably for Sentinel missiles that are on track to replace the Minuteman III. That same year, an underground explosion was conducted in Rainier Mesa, Nevada. According to Reuters, the United States last performed a nuclear test in 1992, and the Soviet Union last tested in 1990.
When asked during a visit to Vietnam in June about the possibility of a preemptive strike under Russia’s nuclear doctrine, Putin brushed it off, saying that Russia does not need it “yet.”
“The Kremlin is eager to discuss low-yield nuclear bombs”
“Recently, Putin has been personally attending active drills. His main goal in sending [nuclear warning] signals to the West is not to threaten, but to bargain,” suggested Luzin, an expert on the Russian armed forces.
During the Trump administration, a presidential special envoy, Marshall S. Billingslea, offered Russia a dialogue on non-strategic nuclear weapons, but Moscow refused, citing concerns about European nuclear deployments, Luzin said. “Now the Kremlin is hinting that it is ready to discuss non-strategic nuclear weapons, low-yield nuclear bombs. But only in exchange for favorable conditions in the war in Ukraine,” he added.
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An avid “dealmaker,” Putin in comments made in July insisted he was not the instigator of “rhetoric concerning nuclear escalation.” At the same time, he touted the destructive force of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. “For some reason, the West believes that Russia will never use them," the Interfax news agency quoted Putin as saying. "If someone's actions threaten our sovereignty and territorial integrity, we consider it possible for us to use all the means at our disposal."
So far, the Kremlin’s bargaining techniques haven't yielded “much success,” Luzin said.
In a commentary published under the auspices of the Quincy Institute, an entity dedicated to promoting “ideas that move US foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace,” two experts, Ivana Nikoli? Hughes and Peter Kuznick, argue that the longer the Ukraine war drags on, the higher the risk of a devastating nuclear exchange with the potential to “end of human civilization as we know it.”
“The concern that Russia could decide to use nuclear weapons if threatened with defeat in the Donbas or Crimea or in a direct war with NATO should not be dismissed lightly,” the co-authors state. “While the U.S. would be less likely to initiate nuclear war given NATO’s conventional superiority, it may respond in kind to Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons.”
The lines of communication for “signaling and some sort of interaction” between Moscow and Washington remain open, said Migdal.
On June 25, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, their first phone call since the replacement of Russia’s ex-defense chief Sergei Shoigu. Another conversation followed on July 12. According to Ryabkov, those discussions helped avert “a new round of escalation.”
Nevertheless, as Ukraine’s unprecedented incursion into Russia’s southwestern Kursk region continues, the risk of further destabilization with potentially devastating consequences remains substantial.
By Ekaterina Venkina via Eurasianet.org
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