By Susan D’Agostino, François Diaz-Maurin, February 29, 2024
Illustration by Sarah Starkey. Credit for photo of Putin: kremlin.ru, changes made, CC BY 3.0.
“The risk of global nuclear war has practically disappeared,” Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, said in his 1991 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, even though Russia and the United States retained their massive nuclear arsenals. In 2021, many were reassured when Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden during a Geneva summit reiterated the Gorbachev-Regan statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
But ever since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, political leaders, nuclear arms control experts, and world citizens have tried to answer some version of the question: Will Putin use nuclear weapons in his war in Ukraine?
Putin again addressed the possibility this week in his annual State of the Nation speech, threatening to use nuclear weapons against NATO countries, if they send troops to fight against Russia in Ukraine. Putin’s comments apparently referenced French President’ Emmanuel Macron’s assertion that NATO countries could decide to send troops to Ukraine—a suggestion that the United States, the UK, and Germany almost immediately ruled out.
The utterances by individuals of note listed below, arranged chronologically, offer a still-unfolding existential narrative on whether nuclear war may or may not be imminent.
Editor’s note: This article updates the original, which was published on April 27, 2022, and a previous update on June 6, 2022.
“They must understand that we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory,” Putin said of any deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine. “All this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and the destruction of civilization. Don’t they get that?”
“I frankly think that the chances of nuclear use are greater than one percent but they are not 10 percent,” said Rose Gottemoeller, former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security and former deputy secretary general of NATO. “But the consequences of Putin using a single nuclear weapon, whether a demonstration strike or in any other way, we have to take it extremely seriously.”
“The likelihood of Russian nuclear use today is less than it was back in late February,” said Scott Sagan, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Spogli Institute for International Studies. “However, unlikely things happen all the times ... and it behooves us to think through what we should do if Russia decides to use nuclear weapons.”
“I know many people around the world are concerned about the use of nuclear weapons” Biden wrote in a guest essay published in The New York Times. But, he wrote, “we currently see no indication that Russia has intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, though Russia’s occasional rhetoric to rattle the nuclear saber is itself dangerous and extremely irresponsible.”
“The current generation of NATO politicians clearly does not take the nuclear threat seriously,” Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, told Newsweek. “We are compelled to warn of the emerging risks associated with the intervention of NATO states into the Russian special military operation.”
“When nuclear deterrence fails, it fails catastrophically,” Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, DC, said.
“I don’t really know [whether Putin is going to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine], although the chances are certainly non-zero,” Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and one of the world’s foremost security experts, said.
“[The new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads] will force all who are trying to threaten our country in the heat of frenzied, aggressive rhetoric to think twice,” President Vladimir Putin said.
“Putin could order the Russian military to drop a single nuclear bomb on a Ukrainian city to try to coerce the Zelensky government into immediately surrendering. This frightening scenario is not fanciful. It is, after all, effectively what the United States did to Japan in 1945,” Scott Sagan, senior fellow at Stanford’s Spogli Institute for International Studies, said.
“We shouldn’t wait for the moment when Russia decides to use nuclear weapons. … We must prepare for that,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
“[G]iven the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they’ve faced so far militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons,” CIA Director William Burns said. “While we’ve seen some rhetorical posturing on the part of the Kremlin, about moving to higher nuclear alert levels, so far we haven’t seen a lot of practical evidence of the kind of deployments or military dispositions that would reinforce that concern.”
“I think the odds of him using chemical or nuclear weapons is at this point pretty low,” Former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said.
“The risk of Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine is very low, and the public concern over nuclear use has far outstripped the nuclear risk,” Adam Mount, director of the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said. “In some ways, it’s the threat that’s meant to do more work than the weapon itself.”
“Russia firmly adheres to the principle that there can be no winners in a nuclear war, and it must not be unleashed," Russia's First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy said.
“None of that’s evident,” Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said of Russia preparing for nuclear war.
“No indications at this time that they’re preparing to use [nuclear] weapons,” a senior US defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said.
“… Russia could introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict when it felt it had run out of conventional options and was facing an existential threat,” Sarah Bidgood, director of the Eurasia program at James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said. “It’s hard to say, because we don’t have a good sense for what all of Putin’s red lines are here, or what he regards as an existential threat.”
“No one is thinking about using, about—even about idea of using a nuclear weapon, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“The likelihood of Putin actually using nuclear weapons remains low, but the threat is still there,” Shannon Bugos, a senior policy analyst at the Arms Control Association, said.
“We have a special document on nuclear deterrence. This document clearly indicates the grounds on which the Russian Federation is entitled to use nuclear weapons. … [This includes] when an act of aggression is committed against Russia and its allies, which jeopardized the existence of the country itself, even without the use of nuclear weapons, that is, with the use of conventional weapons,” Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and deputy chairman of the country’s security council, said.
“[Potential nuclear weapon use in the current war] is something we do have to be concerned about,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
“The risks of a direct confrontation between US and Russian forces may be fairly low at present,” Michael Dobbs, author of One Minute to Midnight, an account of the Cuban missile crisis, said. “But if you multiply that by X months or X years and the number of things that could go wrong, they turn out to be similar mathematically [to the one-in-three nuclear-war odds that President John F. Kennedy had calculated during the Cuban Missile Crisis].”
“[The probability that war in Ukraine will devolve into nuclear war is] less than one in 100—and in my best estimate, closer to one in 1,000,” Harvard political scientist Graham Allison said.
“The chances [of Russia using a nuclear weapon] are low but rising,” said Ulrich Kühn, a nuclear expert at the University of Hamburg and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told the New York Times. “The war is not going well for the Russians, and the pressure from the West is increasing.”
"The Russians have told us that they have made no changes thus far in the operational status of their missiles per se, and I don't have any reason not to believe that,” Rose Gottemoeller, former deputy secretary general of NATO and undersecretary for arms control in the Obama administration, said.
“I think we have to start from the presumption that he would welcome the opportunity to use nuclear weapons," Gen. (Ret.) Wesley Clark said. "He wants to show his determination. He wants to intimidate the West. He thinks he has a nuclear advantage.”
“As this war and its consequences slowly weaken Russian conventional strength, Russia likely will increasingly rely on its nuclear deterrent to signal the West and project strength to its internal and external audiences,” Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, wrote in a report.
“From a risk perspective, I believe we could be at about five or 10 percent of the Cuban Missile Crisis risk level,” Herb Lin, a security scholar at Stanford and the Hoover Instititution, said.
“The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said.
“There is always the danger of inadvertent escalation,” Pavel Podvig, senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, said.
“It seems unimaginable that Russia would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine,” Lynn Rusten, a former White House staffer now at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said. “There would be no reason for it.”
"I think it's very unlikely that Moscow is just going to lob a nuclear weapon at something," Olga Oliker with the International Crisis Group said. "Obviously it's been a week when a lot of people's assumptions have been challenged, but I'll cling to this one for a while."
"At this time, we see no reason to change our own [nuclear] alert levels," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
“No,” President Biden said in response to a question about whether US citizens should be concerned about the start of a nuclear war.
“No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history,” President Vladimir Putin said in a statement widely interpreted as a nuclear threat.
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You all forgot to quote Carl Sagan. It must have slipped your mind. Here tis.
MAD mutual assured destruction is like two Implacable enemies knee deep in gasoline, one with 7,000 matches and the other with 5,000 matches a situation that if it wasn't so sad it would be laugable". I can say with some level of certainty that the situation has not changed. Forever and ever shackled to the nuclear genie.
Putin has stated that he sees himself as the next Peter The Great, that his purpose is conquest to take those nations he wants. He is being the biggest bully on the international playground.
Putin would be a fool not to drop a nuclear weapon directly on Kyiv to secure absolute victory the same way that the US did so with Japan. I am astonished he has not done so already. If he did such a thing, no nation would respond. All would be terrified into compliance - no rational actor would risk full nuclear war. Ukraine would be lost in that moment, and Putin would win. He could then move on to his next target, defined by the borders of the old Russian Empire. Who would dare stop him then?
The nations of the world need to confront a severe truth: either they must face up to this bully, regardless of consequence, they must take him down swiftly and immediately, or they must resign much of the world to Putin's inevitable conquest, appease him, and pray that he actually stops when his empire is constructed according to his desire.
That, in my mind, is the reality of our current situation. Appease the conqueror to avoid nuclear war, or eliminate him risking nuclear war. Currently, nations dither about this, trying to wear down the Russian war machine and the Russian economy in some hope that this will force Putin to either give up, or be removed by his own people.
That is not going to happen, not in a Russia where all media is so tightly controlled.
At some point, his war on Ukraine, if it is not victorious, will stall or become obviously unwinnable. At that point, as stated, he would be a fool not to use a nuke straight onto the capital. I do not see nuclear attack as so distant as the experts above imagine. Any man who publicly depicts himself as another Peter The Great is a man too grandiose to simply back down because the numbers look bad. Worse still: Putin appears genuinely religious, and a man who - actually - believes in heaven is also insane enough to risk a sudden trip there.
I see Putin as a good, conservative poker player. He only makes aggressive moves when he sees the odds are significantly in his favor. Even then, he will not risk his entire bankroll because the use of nuclear weapons presents more significant risks than any possible reward. Putin retreated from his first objective, Ukraine, to focus on taking over Eastern Ukraine to control his risk exposure.
The impetus for Putin's aggressive move in Ukraine resulted from Trump's four years in office. Trump had achieved for Putin what no American POTUS would ever consider doing. He solidified Putin's ability to control the price of a sizable portion of the world's supply of oil on top of what Russia already produces:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-trump-saudi-specialreport/special-report-trump-told-saudi-cut-oil-supply-or-lose-u-s-military-support-sources-idUSKBN22C1V4
Under Trump, Putin became a vital player in the Middle East, from Afghanistan to Libya, and a significant competitor in arms sales. Russia sold arms to Turkey, a NATO member, and then Trump rewarded Turkey by betraying the Kurds. While the U.S. retreated from Syria, Trump gave Russia the green light to use chemical weapons as necessary. As the U.S. influence continued to wane, Russia built military bases and established a significant on-the-ground impact. With a new powerful player in the M.E., Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iraq suddenly had more decision-making power and choices. Putin's hand over the supply of the world's oil and, therefore, its price changed Putin's hand from a pair of jacks to a royal flush.
In May, Russia's oil revenue was up by 50%, despite the sanctions, and the sky is the limit:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-12/russia-oil-revenue up-50-this-year-despite-boycott-iea-says?sref=7XMvQgR4
These consequences of Trump's decisions, if not strict obedience to everything Putin wanted, were readily foreseeable:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/steve-chapman/ct-column-trump-oil-deal-gas-pricesi-chapman-20200415-iwwn3cpegngo5krsm6tfdycqvy-story.html
Finally, Russia and China lined up together, of which Trump's unilateral, aggressive trade war and racist haranguing were no small part. (He should have gone to the WTO) In summary, Trump gave Putin a Royal Flush to invade Ukraine and topped it off with an Insurrection, Depression, Division, Neglect, 10+ Trillion of new Debt + another 10T Fed "backstop," and the Big Lie. Russia will not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Jenifer, your prediction and observations are spot on, and like you, I do not understand why the experts hold the views they do. There are several reasons why the likelihood is very high, including:
1. The release authority and procedures for tactical nuclear weapons use are delegated to a recklessly low level in the chain of command. When the tactical nukes are eventually deployed (and whose to say they aren’t already deployed), the risk of accidental release becomes very high. This means there are not as many moving parts to a tactical nuclear attack as there is in western militaries - less cogs, quicker escalation and a higher chance of a single point of error in the command and control.
2. Whilst everyone is fixated with trying to guess Putin’s thought process, a lot of the argument in favour that Putin will not launch a tactical nuclear first strike, rests on the premise that he has something to lose by doing so. This ignores many of the glaring facts that are obvious, in that he’s a zealot and he’s been working towards this jumping off point for some time, and for anyone to take this decision to invade Ukraine, he must be either reassured that he will use everything including nuclear weapons to win, or he doesn’t care about the consequences, and therefore the nuclear option is as likely as anything else. If he’s a poker player, then he’s one who has worked hard to build up his chips, and he has figuratively gone all-in by invading Ukraine, so caution, fear and being deterred, is not in his mind.
3. The problem with all the analysis at the moment is people are working the problem from the wrong end. We should be asking, ‘why would Putin choose NOT to use nuclear weapons?’. The answers to that are very thin. Would he not use a tactical nuke because of further sanctions? No, because the sanctions have not worked thus far, and are likely not to work in the future. Would he not use a tactical nuke because of retaliatory strikes by NATO? No, because the west wouldn’t respond in kind, and as in WWII, Russia knows it can take a hell of a conventional beating and still emerge victorious. Would he not use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine because of radioactive fall out? No, because the fall out would be minimal. Would he not use tactical nukes because he would turn Russian public opinion against him or change the opinion of other power players in the Kremlin who could threaten his position? Well, THAT is the question, isn’t it? But what the commentators seem to be ignoring, is that Russian public opinion is being quickly turned in favour of the war. The country is preparing its people to accept a tactical nuke solution to their Ukrainian problem. All that’s left to do is create a casus belli to do that, and aside from a likely false flag scenario on Russian soil (which Putin is suspected of doing historically anyway) there are many real risks which the West are creating by this halfhearted approach to dealing with the crisis. What should be happening is a robust commitment to the war from Western powers, with the risk of general nuclear exchange, or if this risk is unpalatable, then leave Ukraine to its fate, provide what humanitarian assistance can be given, and pressure Zelensky to sue for peace.
This attempt at containment is more dangerous and is more rapidly creating the conditions for nukes to be unleashed in Ukraine. Under this current strategy, it is only a matter of time before a tactical low yield nuclear weapon is detonated by the Russians.
If the Russian leader really wants to be a modern Peter The Great, we can expect action, and Peter was a man of action. I am not a historian. Does Putin believe that he is a special agent of God? Doing God’s will? He has not said so in public. He is intelligent and determined and his mission is running into problems. I assume that he doesn’t like the way events are working out, but he hasn’t given an international speech recently. Peter The Great, despite his accomplishments, seemed to be personally insecure. He found enemies around him, for example, his own son. According to Shakespeare: “Uneasy sleeps the head that wears a crown.” It might be true, and Putin might have local enemies. How he acts under severe stress depends on his character, and no one knows exactly what he might do-in character-at this time. Under enduring stress, he’ll act in character, going for what he wants in a psychological sense, not necessarily as we might expect. Let us be clear on exactly what we want.
M.A.D. is a factor. Is Putin's crazy enough to deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine and is the U.S. crazy enough to strike Russia in retaliation. I doubt it, that would be a mass murder-suicide event and neither side is crazy enough to risk that.
But MAD only applies to strategic weapons. Tactical weapons and the concept of ‘limited nuclear war’ completely undermine the MAD doctrinal assumptions.
OK. So what's the answer to all this? What should be done to de-escalate the situation and who should do it? Who is going to be the brave country to put the welfare of the world ahead of its own hegemonic interests? Will it be the seemingly somewhat more democratic nations in the West or the seemingly less democratic nation in the East? Who wants to stand up and be a true hero? Any takers?
From a realist perspective, facing the latest developments of the conflict on the battlefield in Ukarine, and having in mind the sequence of events in the territory of Ukraine and Russia´s border, Putin`s nuclear sabre-rattling initiated on 24FEB22 has not significantly changed since then, so have not the probabilities of Russia using any tactical NW, so far. Kremlin´s discourse has been mostly steady and persistent but also consequenceless in avoiding further West incremental quality of military assistance to Ukraine. The Kremlin officials nuclear rethoric and the “collective West” vehement replies have very much served to reinforce the security dilema, keeping it persistent and dangerously higher and higher. Rationality is at the heart of US and Russia power politics and strategic competition, either using nuclear deterrence or compellence discourses and intents clearly communicated to all sides. In that sense Biden has intelligently given no answer at all to Putin´s initial threats (in order to dissuade the western interference in the conflict). Unfortunatelly the lack of western disciplined discourses (many times multi-level and multi-purpose) since last summer (not unrelated to the unsuccessful Ukraine counteroffensive) has not played in its favor. Last week´s disclosure of a conversation between German Air Force high ranking generals, on Webex, openly discussing plans on how to effectivelly hit the Kersh Bridge (connecting Russia to Crimea) with 10 to 20 German made Taurus missiles, in a direct interference of Germany in the war, and also, unveiling that British solders are deploying British made Storm Shadow missiles in Ukraine, don´t stop potential nuclear escalation at all, actually feed Kremlin´s rethoric.
Perhaps it is time to go on the offensive, information wise. Think of a leaflet drop over Moscow (or the equivalent). Each would say:
"Putin is saying he will use nuclear weapons in the Russian war of Genocide against Ukraine. The obvious retaliation target is Moscow. From nuclear tests we know that within xx km all will die; within yy km all will get radiation poisoned; within zz km all will get delayed exposure leading to early death. You must be 50-100 km from Moscow to be safe at all. If you can, think about moving away before it is too late."
OR words to that effect. Maybe it will have an effect on some of the population!
If leaflets were dropped, my thought would be to drop leaflets informing Russian citizens of why the war in Ukraine is unjust and why they should seek to end it, and that Putin is threatening nuclear retaliation that would endanger the whole world.
I think threats against the population would be unethical. The focus should be on information and de-escalation of hostilities. Scaring people will only produce irrational decisions.