Russia Lowers Threshold for Nuclear Force

Yesterday Russia updated their Nuclear Weapons doctrine, which lays out the state’s preconditions for their use of nuclear weapons.

The doctrine now states that nuclear force could be deployed if a Russia (or Belarus) suffers a large-scale conventional attack. The threshold conditions have also been lowered to include an attack by any state which is being supported by a nuclear power.

According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) “Russia’s adoption of an amended nuclear doctrine is the latest iteration of now-frequent Russian nuclear saber-rattling and does not represent a substantial change in Russia’s nuclear posture, doctrine, or the threat of the employment of nuclear weapons.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg cited a US National Security Council spokesperson who reportedly said that Moscow’s move did not come as a surprise to Washington, nor would it warrant a change in US doctrine.

Nevertheless, Russia’s move has been condemned by the Western officials who maintain that it Moscow’s rhetoric remains highly dangerous. It’s understood that Russia has the largest confirmed stockpile of nuclear warheads on the planet at 5,580, with just over 1,700 of those ready to be deployed.

Russia’s threat of WMD’s has been persistent throughout the conflict in Ukraine. In 2022 for example, Putin attempted to thwart Western resolve in their support of Ukraine by threatening the use of nuclear force. Here the Russian President said that “I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and for separate components and more modern than those of NATO countries and when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal”. The following year, Russia also announced they were positioning nuclear weapons in Belarus.

The ISW also argue the Russia’s amendment’s signals that they are worried about the impact of Ukraine’s ability to use US made long range missiles. Here they state that “the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to inject nuclear threats into the information space indicates that the Kremlin is concerned about the battlefield impacts of Ukrainian strikes into Russia with Western-provided weapons.”

The development from Moscow comes just days after the Biden Administration’s gave Kyiv the green light to fire long-range missiles supplied by the US into Russia. ATACMS missiles have already been fired against a Russian arms depot in Bryansk.

Speaking at the G20 in Sao Paulo earlier this week, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affair Sergey Lavrov said that “If the long-range missiles are used from the territory of Ukraine against the Russian territory, it will mean that they are controlled by American military experts, and we will view that as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia and respond accordingly”.