Putin seeks alternatives to nuclear threats to deter the West - WP
Kyiv • UNN
The Kremlin realizes that nuclear threats are losing their effectiveness. Putin is considering “more subtle” options for responding to Western support for Ukraine, avoiding direct escalation.
The Kremlin is increasingly realizing that the West is not falling for its nuclear threats, and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is looking for new ways to enforce his “red lines.” This is reported by The Washington Post with reference to analysts and officials of the Russian Federation, according to UNN.
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When Russian President Vladimir Putin warned earlier this month that Western approval of a Ukrainian strike deep into Russia would mean that Moscow was at war with NATO, Russian propagandists began to rattle off nuclear weapons.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, threatened that strikes on Russia would lead to a war with nuclear weapons and reminded the European Parliament that its headquarters in Strasbourg is located only three minutes away from a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
However, there is a growing realization within the Kremlin that repeated threats to use nuclear weapons are beginning to lose their power, and that Moscow's “red lines” are constantly being crossed. Analysts and officials close to senior Russian diplomats say that Putin is looking for a “more subtle and limited” response to the West's allowing Ukraine to use longer-range missiles to strike Russia.
“There has been a flood of nuclear threats. Immunity to such statements has already developed, and they do not frighten anyone,” said a Russian official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.
A Russian scientist with close ties to senior Russian diplomats agreed, calling the nuclear option “the least possible” of the scenarios “because it would really lead to the dissatisfaction of Russia's partners in the Global South, and also because from a military point of view it is clearly not very effective.
“All this talk of a nuclear threshold exaggerates the threat of this kind of escalation and underestimates the possibility of alternatives,” the academician added. “Since the West has a global military infrastructure...there are many vulnerabilities that can be found.
As WP writes, Putin is going through the motions to deter Western support for Ukraine and try to enforce his “red lines,” said Tatiana Stanova, founder of the French political consulting company R-Politik. “There are options that he does not want to use, and there are options that he is ready to consider today,” she said. She also added that Putin sees nuclear weapons as “the worst option for everyone, including himself.
Nuclear measures or a direct attack on NATO territory would be considered only if “Putin feels threatened by the existence of Russia in its current form, when he believes 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 appear to have calmed down to some extent over the apparent indecision of the United States to lift restrictions on Ukraine's strikes on military targets deep inside Russia with Western missiles. According to analysts and officials, there is a growing expectation that if authorization is granted, it will be “very limited.
However, Putin is still under pressure to react and stop the constant crossing of his “red lines.
“There is an understanding that the red lines drawn by Moscow are being ignored by the West, and Moscow needs to take more weighty and significant steps to demonstrate its seriousness,” the academician said.
Moscow could respond with sabotage operations against military targets or other infrastructure in the West, where Russian involvement would be difficult to prove. It could also turn to proxy groups that are already fighting Western interests, such as the Houthis in Yemen, who have been attacking naval vessels in the Red Sea, says Lawrence Friedman, emeritus professor of military studies at King's College London, emphasizing a possibility also raised by the Russian academic.
He doesn't want this to turn into something dramatic or radical, in the sense of nuclear weapons or direct hostilities between our troops and his, but that doesn't mean that something serious is not happening
Sergei Markov, a political analyst with ties to the Kremlin, said that there is a growing realization in the highest echelons of the Russian army that “Russia has spoiled the West, and that we have talked a lot about red lines, but done nothing. At some point we will have to escalate.
Markov suggested that possible retaliatory measures could include the closure of the British embassy in Moscow and strikes on air bases in Poland and Romania where F-16s are based. “Since Russia is confident that at some point Moscow will definitely be struck, we must strike first,” he said.
Although Stanova dismissed the possibility of such strikes on NATO air bases as unlikely and possible only in case of “desperation,” nuclear rhetoric still has its uses. Both she and Markov note that members of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign have amplified Moscow's threats as a campaign issue.
This week, Trump and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in an article for the Hill that the decision to allow Ukraine to use Western long-range missiles “would put the world at greater risk of nuclear conflict than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis” and called instead for direct talks with Moscow.
Putin may try to increase the threat and play the “golden card” by escalating before the election, Markov said. “If Putin escalates, the US will fear a nuclear war, and Trump will win.
Friedman also noted that Putin's nuclear threats were deliberately ambiguous to increase the sense of danger. “It sounds threatening, but he never actually says exactly what he's going to do. He lets us make our own interpretations, and people interpret the worst.
Ultimately, however, as the effectiveness of this approach wanes, Putin has not yet figured out what to replace it with, Stanova says, and uncertainty is growing because “no one understands” what responses Putin will ultimately choose for each specific action.
“I think Putin doesn't understand either,” she said.
