“Awareness is growing in the Kremlin that the West is not amenable to nuclear threats, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking for new ways to enforce his red lines. Source: The Washington Post Details: In early September, Putin warned that if the West approved Ukraine’s strikes deep into Russia, it would mean Moscow was at war with NATO, Russian propagandists rushed to rattle off nuclear weapons.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
Awareness is growing in the Kremlin that the West is not amenable to nuclear threats, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking for new ways to enforce his red lines.
Source: The Washington Post
Details: In early September, Putin warned that if the West approved Ukraine’s strikes deep into Russia, it would mean Moscow was at war with NATO, Russian propagandists rushed to rattle off nuclear weapons.
But inside the Kremlin there is a growing understanding that the repeated use of the nuclear threat is beginning to lose its power, and Moscow’s red lines are constantly being crossed. Analysts and officials close to Russian diplomats say Putin is instead seeking a more measured and limited response from the West if the West allows Ukraine to use longer-range missiles to strike Russia.
“There has been a glut of nuclear threatssaid a Russian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. “There is already immunity to such statements, and they do not scare anyone.”
A Russian academic with close ties to high-ranking Russian diplomats agreed, calling nuclear option “least possible” from the scenarios, “because it would really lead to discontent among Russia’s partners in the Global South, and also because, obviously, from a military point of view, it is not very effective.”
“All this discussion about the nuclear threshold exaggerates the threat of this type of escalation and underestimates the possibility of alternatives,” the academic added. “Because the West has a global military infrastructure… there are many vulnerable points to be found.”
Putin is looking for different optionsto curb Western support for Ukraine and try to ensure compliance with its red lines, believes Tetiana Stanova, founder of the French political consulting company R-Politik. “There are options that he does not want to apply, and there are options that he is ready to consider today,” she said, and he considers nuclear weapons “the worst option for everyone, including himself.”
Nuclear measures or a direct attack on NATO territory will be considered only if “Putin feels a threat to the existence of Russia in its current form, when he believes that there is no other way out,” she said. “In such a situation, the West should go much further than what it is discussing now.”
Russian officials already appeared to be somewhat reassured by the United States’ apparent reluctance to lift restrictions on Ukraine striking military targets deep in Russia with Western missiles. Expectations were growing that if permission were granted, it would be “very limited,” analysts and officials said.
However, Putin is still under pressure to respond in some way and prevent his red lines from being constantly crossed.
“There is an understanding that the red lines drawn by Moscow are being ignored by the West, and Moscow must take more significant and significant steps to demonstrate the seriousness of its intentions,” the academician said.
Moscow could respond with sabotage operations against military facilities or other infrastructure in the West, where Russian involvement would be difficult to prove. It could also turn to proxy groups already fighting Western interests, such as the Houthi militia in Yemen, which attacks shipping in the Red Sea, said Lawrence Friedman, professor emeritus of military studies at King’s College London.
“He does not want the situation to develop into something dramatic or radicalin the sense of nuclear weapons or direct hostilities between our troops and his troops, but [це] doesn’t mean there’s nothing serious going on,” Friedman said.
Sergei Markov, a political scientist linked to the Kremlin, said there is a growing awareness in the upper echelons of the Russian military that “Russia has corrupted the West, and that we talk a lot about red lines but do nothing. At some point we will have to escalate.”
Markov suggested that the possible answers could be the closing of the British embassy in Moscow and strikes on air bases in Poland and Romania, where the F-16 fighters deployed by Ukraine are based. “Since Russia is sure that at some point strikes on Moscow will definitely take place, we must strike first,” he said.
Putin may try to increase threatening rhetoric and play the “golden card” by escalating before the elections, Markov said. “If Putin escalates, the US will fear a nuclear war, and Trump will win.”
Friedman also noted that Putin’s nuclear threats are deliberately ambiguous to heighten the sense of danger. “It sounds threatening, but he’s never really very specific about what he’s going to do. He lets us make our own interpretations, and people interpret the worst.”
As the effectiveness of this approach declines, Putin has not yet figured out what to replace it with, Stanova said, and uncertainty is growing because “nobody understands” what response Putin will ultimately choose for each specific action.
“I think Putin doesn’t understand either,” she said.