Euractiv.com with Reuters
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergei Ryabkov delivers his speech during a session of the Conference on Disarmament at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, 2 March 2023.
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Russia will make changes to its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons in response to what it regards as Western escalation in the war in Ukraine, state media quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Sunday (1 September).
The existing nuclear doctrine, set out in a decree by President Vladimir Putin in 2020, says Russia may use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.
Some hawks among Russia’s military analysts have urged Putin to lower the threshold for nuclear use in order to “sober up” Russia’s enemies in the West.
Putin said in June that the nuclear doctrine was a “living instrument” that could change, depending on world events. Ryabkov’s comments on Sunday were the clearest statement yet that changes would indeed be made.
“The work is at an advanced stage, and there is a clear intent to make corrections,” state news agency TASS cited Ryabkov as saying.
He said the decision is “connected with the escalation course of our Western adversaries” in connection with the Ukraine conflict.
Moscow accuses the West of using Ukraine as a proxy to wage war against it, with the aim of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia and breaking it apart.
The United States and its allies deny that, saying they are helping Ukraine defend itself against a colonial-style war of aggression by Russia.
‘Red lines’
Putin said on day one of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that anyone who tried to hinder or threaten it would suffer “consequences that you have never faced in your history”.
Since then, he has issued a series of further statements that the West regards as nuclear threats, and announced the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
That has not deterred the US and its allies from stepping up military aid to Ukraine in ways that were unthinkable when the war started, including by supplying tanks, long-range missiles and F-16 fighter jets.
Ukraine shocked Moscow last month by piercing its western border in an incursion by thousands of troops that Russia is still fighting to repel.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the operation made a mockery of Putin’s “red lines”. He is also lobbying hard for the US to allow it to use advanced Western weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Sunday that the West was “going too far” and that Russia would do everything to protect its interests.
Ryabkov did not say when the updated nuclear doctrine would be ready. “The time for completing this work is a rather difficult question, given that we are talking about the most important aspects of ensuring our national security,” he said.
Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other country. Putin said in March that Moscow was ready for the eventuality of a nuclear war “from a military-technical point of view”.
He said, however, that he saw no rush towards nuclear confrontation and that Russia had never faced a need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
By Mark Trevelyan
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in Saint Petersburg, Russia June 7, 2024. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov/Pool/File Photo
What are these weapons, how might they be used and what do we know about the drills?
WHAT ARE TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND HOW POWERFUL ARE THEY?
Tactical nuclear weapons are intended for battlefield use, as opposed to strategic weapons designed to be fired across vast distances to wipe out enemy cities. The underlying physics is the same, using nuclear fission and fusion reactions to release vast amounts of energy. The destructive power of tactical nuclear weapons, while typically smaller than strategic weapons, is still comparable with the atomic bombs used by the United States to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War Two.
HOW MANY DO RUSSIA AND THE U.S. HAVE?
The United States has about 200, half of which are at bases in Europe. Russia has about 1,558 non-strategic nuclear warheads, experts at the Federation of American Scientists estimated, opens new tab in March. These could be delivered by different means including being dropped as bombs or fitted to a variety of missiles that are capable of carrying either nuclear or conventional warheads.
WHAT DO THE RUSSIAN EXERCISES LOOK LIKE?
Russia said the first phase, conducted last month, involved Kinzhal and Iskander missiles. It took place in the southern region of Akhtubinsk, according to geolocation confirmed by Reuters. Video released by the defence ministry showed convoys of vehicles transporting Iskanders and presumably the nuclear warheads intended to be fitted to them. The warheads were blurred in the video. It also showed a Tu-22M Backfire bomber plane and a MiG-31K fighter, both capable of carrying the hypersonic Kinzhal. Video of the second phase on Tuesday showed an Iskander system being driven into a field and the missiles raised into position, as well as MiG-31 supersonic interceptors and Tupolev Tu-22M3 long-range supersonic bombers.
WHY IS RUSSIA HOLDING THE DRILLS?
Russia says such exercises are normal practice but that they were made necessary by what it sees as hostile actions by the United States and its European allies. Moscow said last month it hoped the drills would cool "hotheads" in Western capitals, after French President Emmanuel Macron raised the possibility of sending European troops to fight with Ukraine against Russia and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Kyiv was free to use Western-supplied weapons against targets on Russian territory. Western nuclear experts say Russia is sending a signal aimed at deterring NATO from wading more deeply into the Ukraine war.
Experts say the point would not be to capture territory, because the use of such a weapon would create a poisoned radioactive wasteland. Rather, some believe Russia might use one in a scenario where its troops were in retreat and facing a major defeat. In a report, opens new tab for the International Institute for Strategic Studies in January, former Pentagon and NATO official William Alberque said Russia might consider using a non-strategic nuclear weapon (NSNW) to "sober up" the West and coerce it into resolving a conflict on Moscow's terms, calculating that the U.S. would be unwilling to cross the nuclear threshold in retaliation. President Vladimir Putin said last week that Russia would be able to achieve victory in Ukraine without resorting to nuclear weapons.
HOW WOULD WE KNOW IF A TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPON WAS USED?
Experts say preparations to launch one would probably be visible to Western military intelligence satellites, as it would involve the kinds of steps seen during the exercises, including moving warheads from a central storage facility. These would take place over a number of hours, with Russian command and control centres being placed on high alert.
From the point of view of Russia's adversary, incoming missiles carrying tactical nuclear warheads would be indistinguishable from the types of missiles with conventional warheads that Russia has been firing at Ukraine for more than two years. But an actual nuclear strike would be clearly identifiable by the scale of destruction, the seismic shock and the massive release of radiation.
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Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Ros Russell
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Mark Trevelyan
Thomson Reuters
Chief writer on Russia and CIS. Worked as a journalist on 7 continents and reported from 40+ countries, with postings in London, Wellington, Brussels, Warsaw, Moscow and Berlin. Covered the break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Security correspondent from 2003 to 2008. Speaks French, Russian and (rusty) German and Polish.
What are Tactical Nuclear Weapons?
Published Jun 1, 2022
The best thing we can do to reduce the danger of tactical nuclear weapons is to eliminate them.
Tactical nuclear weapons, also called nonstrategic nuclear weapons, are generally designed for battlefield use and have a shorter range than strategic, or long-range, nuclear weapons, which are designed to directly attack an adversary’s homeland.
Some analysts describe tactical nuclear weapons as intended to win a battle, while strategic weapons are intended to win a war. Russia’s 2022 war on Ukraine raised serious questions about these weapons, but the weapons themselves have existed since the beginning of the Cold War and their dangers are well known.
Tactical nuclear weapons can have lower explosive “yield” than strategic weapons, meaning they’re explosively less powerful. This may make them more militarily useful, and less politically objectionable, and thus more likely to be used. However, many Russian and US tactical weapons have yields far greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which instantly killed more than 70,000 people.
While long- and medium-range nuclear systems have been constrained or eliminated by arms control treaties, tactical nuclear weapons have never had verified limits. During the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union built up massive numbers of these weapons in their arsenals, many deployed in Europe. Today’s stockpiles are smaller but still capable of incomparable destruction.
Bottomline: there is no universal definition of tactical nuclear weapons. Indeed, then-US secretary of defense James Mattis declared in 2018 “I don’t think there’s any such thing as a ‘tactical nuclear weapon.’ Any nuclear weapon used at any time is a strategic game changer.”
Use of any nuclear weapon would break the “nuclear taboo” that has held since 1945, dramatically changing the course of history.
What are tactical nuclear weapons for?
Initially, tactical nuclear weapons were simply another weapon in the US arsenal. Dozens of types were designed and tens of thousands produced, some with very low yields designed to be fired by one soldier. Over time, as Soviet conventional forces expanded, US-aligned nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began to view nuclear weapons as an equalizer, allowing the alliance to compensate for numerical disadvantages in tanks and artillery.
As both sides developed a range of nuclear weapons, some theorists perceived a need to meet an adversary with equivalent force at every level. Their concern was that if a country only had strategic nuclear weapons, it might hesitate to use them to retaliate against a lower-level tactical nuclear attack because the response would be disproportionate and could lead to an all-out nuclear war.
According to this flawed and dangerous model, the United States needed a vast array of weapons to match every step in the so-called “escalation ladder.”
An even more troubling model relies on the idea of “escalation dominance.” This requires seeking such superior capability at any possible level that rivals are deterred because they see any battle as hopeless. This dangerous theory envisions the possibility of “winning” a nuclear war.
However, as President Ronald Reagan first declared in 1984 and the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom recently reaffirmed, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
What tactical nuclear weapons do the United States and Russia have?
The United States has about 200 tactical nuclear gravity bombs with explosive yields adjustable between 0.3 and 170 kilotons. (The yield of the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons.) The Pentagon deploys about 100 of those bombs, called the B61, in five European countries: Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
Meanwhile Russia has nearly 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons with a broad range of yields, from very low to over 100 kilotons. These can be delivered by air, ship, and ground-based systems, some of which also deliver conventional weapons. For example, some of the missiles Russia has used against Ukraine can also carry nuclear warheads, increasing the potential for confusion.
Why are tactical nuclear weapons so dangerous?
The United States and Russia hold 90% of the world’s stockpile of almost 13,000 nuclear weapons. Neither has the capability to wipe out the other’s nuclear arsenal in an initial attack. Both countries understand that any use of strategic nuclear weapons would invite a nuclear counterattack, and the potential of a civilization-ending nuclear exchange.
Tactical nuclear weapons, however, introduce greater ambiguity, raising the possibility that a country might think it could get away with a limited attack, such as using a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon to strike an isolated military target where few civilians would be harmed. Another possibility is a demonstration strike, without any military utility. For example, Russia could explode a nuclear weapon over the Black Sea to warn NATO countries against aiding its adversaries, such as Ukraine.
Because tactical nuclear weapons are considered more “useable,” they increase the risk of nuclear war. US wargames predict that a conflict involving use of tactical nuclear weapons will quickly spiral out of control. A Princeton University simulation of a US-Russian conflict that begins with the use of a tactical nuclear weapon predicts rapid escalation that would leave more than 90 million people dead and injured.
Have there been efforts to control or eliminate tactical nuclear weapons?
As the Cold War ended, President George H.W. Bush realized that the huge US and Soviet nuclear arsenals created unnecessary risks, and that tactical nuclear weapons were particularly dangerous. In 1991, he announced the elimination of virtually all US tactical nuclear weapons, including all tactical nuclear weapons deployed on navy ships. Thousands of weapons were retired, and most were destroyed.
President Bush saw the danger as so great that he acted unilaterally, with no reciprocal commitment from the Soviet Union. However, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev did respond, retiring many types of tactical nuclear weapons and removing all tactical nuclear weapons from surface ships and multipurpose submarines
Explainer
No First Use Explained
What's a No First Use (NFU) Nuclear Policy and would adopting one make the United States safer?
What can we do to reduce the dangers of tactical nuclear weapons?
Until tactical nuclear weapons are eliminated, these immediate steps would help reduce the danger that they present:
- First, the United States can commit to not develop or deploy any new tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons, such as the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) the Trump administration initiated.
- The US should withdraw the 100 tactical nuclear gravity bombs based in Europe. They have remained there for political reasons, to signal US commitment to NATO. If reassurance is needed, conventional forces would have more military utility.
- As soon as feasible, the US and Russia should negotiate a new treaty or agreement to control and eventually eliminate tactical nuclear weapons. An agreement to limit and control the types of weapons that each side finds most “useable” could reduce the danger of misunderstandings and potential for nuclear escalation in a crisis.
- Finally, the United States could implement a no-first-use nuclear policy, declaring that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons. Although this would not remove all the dangers of being drawn into an escalatory cycle if an adversary used a tactical nuclear weapon first, it would clarify that if an adversary did not cross that line, the United States would not be the one to start a nuclear war. This would be in the US interest, since its conventional military is the most powerful in the world.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has worked on nuclear weapons issues for more than half a century. We’re committed to a world free of nuclear risk—and you can help
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