President Vladimir Putin has warned the West that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles. The Russian leader presented changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine at a meeting of the country’s Security Council. Putin said a nuclear power supporting an attack on Russia would now be considered a joint aggressor. Mariana, welcome.
What should we make of Vladimir Putin’s latest comments on Russia using nuclear weapons? Well, Stephen, this is the latest instance of a long string of nuclear rhetoric and signaling that has been coming out of Moscow since the beginning of this full-scale invasion. This is significant.
We knew that the Russian leadership has been reviewing their military nuclear doctrine, and the general expectation has been that the Russian threshold for the use of nuclear weapons will be lowered. There’s been a lot of talk about this by Russian leaders, by Russian commentators. And so here we have a preview, right? There are a few significant things to note.
One is that the previous version of the Russian doctrine adopted in 2020 allowed also a nuclear response to a large scale conventional attack. but only in extreme circumstances where the very survival of the state was at stake. Now we understand from Mr. Putin’s speech today, this formulation has changed to say, well, extreme circumstances that jeopardize sovereignty of Russia.
What does that really mean? And who defines what? what serious threats to sovereignty might constitute. And the other part is this very specific massive air attack description of the potential conventional attack on Russia. Again, who determines what massive really constitutes. And also the third important thing is that he specifically didn’t say allies of a nuclear arm. of a nuclear power, right? He said those supported by a nuclear power would be treated as acting in concert, right, with the nuclear power. This clearly points to Ukraine, right, who’s a non-allied partner.
Mariana, if Putin did use nuclear weapons, what kind of weapons are we talking about? There’s obviously a range and a difference in size of detonation, things like this. Is it realistic to imagine a kind of tactical use? of nuclear weapons, or what are we talking about here? Well, Russia has been using a number of delivery systems, of missiles that also come with a nuclear warhead, right? So these are dual capable systems, such as for instance, Iskandar-M short range ballistic missiles.
Those have been used extensively in this war by Russia. So when we have an incoming, you know, from Russia to Ukraine, and we see that it’s an Iskander missile, we don’t know if it’s nuclear tipped or conventionally tipped. Could potentially carry, you know, would qualify still as a battlefield or a tactical nuclear weapon, you know, the size of Hiroshima or the size of five Hiroshimas anywhere in that range.
There are also Kinjal air-launched ballistic missiles that have been used again in conventional. version in Ukraine extensively. Those are particularly deadly because they’re hypersonic. They fly really fast and they’re very difficult to intercept. Those also come with a warhead. And finally, anything, any, well, a number of air launch cruise missiles that are carried by strategic bombers, TU-95MS and TU-160s, that have again been used extensively in Ukraine.
We know that Putin’s comments also come after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the UN He issued a warning that Russia is planning to attack Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. together to what another alarming report from our Intelligence now Putin does seem to be planning attacks on our nuclear power plants and the Infrastructure aiming to disconnect the plants from the power grid And it’s important for us that all these people can understand us, understand that Ukraine wants to end this war more than anyone in the world.
All right, Slensky there speaking at the UN General Assembly back to Marianna Bucher and from the Harvard Kennedy School. We heard what he said there. How serious is this threat to nuclear power plants in Ukraine? Well, it is very serious.
Ukrainian power grid in general has been severely degraded in the two and a half years, and especially over the past six months, starting in March this year, where generating capacity has been targeted.could, you know, all of Ukrainian thermal power plants, majority of the hydroelectric power plants are entirely destroyed.
So Ukraine’s reliance on nuclear went from about 50% before the war to about 70 right now. So the grid basically hangs on these nuclear power plants. And to say that Russia doesn’t have to actually target the reactors themselves, they can target open transformer stations, substations that supply electricity to the to the power plant or actually used for offloading the electricity that’s generated.
