NUCLEAR RISKSWill Putin Use Nuclear Weapons?
Nuclear signaling is woven through the invasion of Ukraine in a way we haven’t seen since the days of the Cuban missile crisis. Naturally, it has fed a wave of speculation on social media about the potential crossing of the nuclear threshold, either deliberately or inadvertently.
It’s still early days in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but so far nuclear issues have enjoyed a much higher profile than might have been expected. A strategic missile exercise formed part of the lead-up to the invasion. And when first launching the military operation last Thursday, Putin warned darkly that any country that stood in Russia’s way would suffer ‘consequences that you have never encountered in your history’.
Since then, we’ve had statements that allege the invasion was motivated in part by a concern that Ukraine was a proliferation threat. We’ve had a Russian spokesman say that the reason Chernobyl was seized so early in the campaign was to deny Ukraine the option of making a ‘dirty’ bomb. And we’ve had voters in Belarus—in a disputed referendum—renounce the anti-nuclear clause in its constitution, opening up the possible deployment of Russian nuclear weapons there.
Perhaps most worryingly, on Sunday Putin instructed his defense minister and chief of the general staff to raise the alert level of Russian deterrence forces by putting them on a ‘special regime of combat duty’. It’s not clear what he meant. US defense officials observed that this was not a term of operational art with which they were familiar and stated that they had seen no subsequent ‘muscle movement’ in the status of the Russian nuclear arsenal.
The Russian ministry of defense confirmed on Monday that its nuclear missile forces and the Northern and Pacific fleets had been placed on ‘enhanced’ combat duty. Some reports spoke of Russia boosting staff at its nuclear sites—which might mean that all leave has been cancelled.
All of this has made for a hectic time in the world of nuclear strategists. Nuclear signaling is woven through the invasion of Ukraine in a way we haven’t seen since the days of the Cuban missile crisis. Naturally, it has fed a wave of speculation on social media about the potential crossing of the nuclear threshold, either deliberately or inadvertently.
