In raising nuclear threat, Putin bets Trump is willing to back down on Ukraine

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Vladimir Putin has escalated Russia’s hybrid war against the West again and again over the past decade, betting each time that the United States, in particular, will back down before he does.

Now Mr. Putin is upping the ante like never before, challenging Washington and its allies with a blunt question: Are they willing to risk a nuclear war over the fate of Ukraine?

The long-ruling Kremlin boss is betting that the answer will be no, particularly once U.S. president-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House.

Putin issues warning to United States with revised nuclear doctrine

The latest round of escalations began Sunday, when U.S. media outlets reported that departing President Joe Biden had agreed – after months of deliberations – to allow the Ukrainian military to use Western-made long-range missiles to strike at targets deep inside Russia.

Two days later, Mr. Putin signed a new nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for ordering a nuclear strike against Russia’s adversaries.

The revised doctrine, which was drafted in September, but which Mr. Putin waited until Tuesday to sign into law, allows for nuclear weapons to be used in the event of an attack on Russia “by any non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state.” Ukraine is, of course, a non-nuclear state that has the support of three nuclear states: the U.S., Britain and France.

Explainer: What are ATACMS and how could they change the Ukraine-Russia war? The missiles and Putin’s new nuclear doctrine explained

On Tuesday, the Russian military reported Ukraine had made its first use of the Biden administration’s new policy, firing six U.S.-made ATACMS missiles at an ammunition depot in Russia’s Bryansk region.

On Wednesday, the BBC reported that Ukrainian forces had fired British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles at targets inside Russia for the first time. The British government had reportedly been waiting for the U.S. decision before authorizing long-range strikes into Russia using Storm Shadows, though no formal announcement has been made.

Most Western embassies in Kyiv – including Canada’s – were closed Wednesday after a warning from the U.S. State Department that Russia could launch “a potential significant air attack” on the city.

Russia contends that NATO would have to assist Ukraine in programming the targets for long-range systems such as ATACMS and Storm Shadows. Mr. Putin said that allowing the use of Western-supplied long-range missiles “will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries – the United States, and European countries – in the war in Ukraine.”

Russia’s previous nuclear doctrine, written just four years ago, envisioned the use of weapons of mass destruction only “when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.” The new document allows for a nuclear response in the event of an undefined “critical threat” to Russia’s “sovereignty and/or territorial integrity.” Ukraine has occupied several hundred square kilometres of the western Russian region of Kursk since a surprise offensive in August.

North Korean soldiers reportedly face Ukrainian fire for first time since training in Russia

The new doctrine also extends the umbrella of Russia’s nuclear protection to Moscow’s closest ally, Belarus, which has allowed Russian forces to launch attacks against Ukraine from its territory.

The Kremlin’s nuclear threats, and the West’s unwillingness to invite Ukraine to join the NATO military alliance, have generated at least some discussion in Kyiv about whether Ukraine needs to pursue a nuclear program of its own. “We are thinking about our nuclear doctrine. We don’t want to do it, but we need to do something to save our country and nation,” said Mykhailo Samus, director of the New Geopolitics Research Network, a military think tank that prepares reports for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office.

An official in Mr. Zelensky’s office told The Globe and Mail that there was no serious consideration of pursuing nuclear weapons. But Mr. Samus said that Ukraine – which under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum gave up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union (in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the U.S. and Britain that proved hollow) – would have no choice but to consider all its options if it were left to stand alone against an aggressive Russia.

That’s precisely the situation many Ukrainians fear their country will soon face. Mr. Trump has said he plans to bring about a swift end to the war between Russia and Ukraine after he takes office on Jan. 20. Fears are high in Kyiv that he will try to force Ukraine to make peace by cutting off the flow of military assistance. Ukrainian troops and politicians alike admit their country would struggle to continue the war without U.S. help.

The next two months will be crucial in shaping the front lines ahead of any peace talks. With Russian troops rapidly gaining ground in the southeastern Donbas region of Ukraine, the Biden administration’s decision to allow the use of long-range weapons – along with rushing another US$6-billion worth of weapons to Kyiv – are seen as being aimed at slowing that advance and bolstering the Ukrainian negotiating position.

Mr. Biden’s decision to lift the restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied missiles – which Mr. Trump could theoretically reverse – was also said to be a response to the arrival of some 10,000 North Korean troops who have joined Mr. Putin’s war against Ukraine.

Many Kremlin watchers were quick to wave off the changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine as mere sabre-rattling – pointing out that Russia, which has the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, has hinted at their possible use throughout its 1,000-day-old invasion of Ukraine.

Throughout the war, Russia has used the West’s fears of escalation as a way of slowing down the pace of military assistance. Western leaders have spent months deliberating the possible consequences of crossing perceived Kremlin “red lines” before delivering the first anti-tank missiles, modern battle tanks and F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, only to finally approve the aid each time without drawing a substantial response from Moscow.

But Mr. Putin has also defied predictions and enforced other Kremlin “red lines” – most notably with his February, 2022, decision to order the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a war he says was necessitated in part by Ukraine’s growing ties to NATO. Mr. Putin also caught the West off-guard with the 2014 seizure and annexation of Crimea, as well as the 2008 invasion of Georgia, and Russia’s 2015 military intervention in Syria.

Each military move came in response to what the Kremlin saw as a threat to core Russian security interests.

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Some who study Mr. Putin closely warn that the two months between now and Mr. Trump’s inauguration present a period of particular danger, as Mr. Putin could ratchet up nuclear tensions as a way of setting the conditions for talks with the incoming U.S. administration.

“The current situation offers Putin a significant temptation to escalate. With Trump not yet in office, such a move would not interfere with any immediate peace initiatives but could instead reinforce Trump’s argument for direct dialogue with Putin,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a Paris-based expert on Russian politics, wrote this week for her R. Politik research firm. “Putin may seek to present the West with two stark choices: ‘Do you want a nuclear war? You will have it,’ or ‘Let’s end this war on Russia’s terms.’ ”

Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based expert on Russia’s nuclear forces, wrote on social media that he saw the revised nuclear doctrine as the beginning of an escalated Russian challenge to the U.S. The next steps, he forecast, could occur outside of Ukraine.

“I believe that these steps, if taken, will be non-nuclear, but the threat of escalation to nuclear would be strongly implied,” Mr. Podvig wrote in a series of posts on Bluesky on Tuesday, the same day two internet cables that run beneath the Baltic Sea were cut in an apparent act of sabotage.

“The challenge for the U.S./NATO would be to react in a way that would not lead to further escalation,” Mr. Podvig wrote. “If Moscow has made the decision to escalate, this decision would include the resolve to go as far down the escalation road as necessary. This is not the competition one would want to find oneself in.”