Putin revises his nuclear doctrine, but have his red lines shifted?

Russian President Vladimir Putin is fond of nuclear saber-rattling: On the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin leader presided over the rehearsal of a nuclear strike, and his not-so-veiled nuclear threats have since kept US officials on edge.

This week, Putin once again rattled the arms-control world by revealing proposed changes to his country’s nuclear doctrine. In a meeting Wednesday of his Security Council, the president said Russia would revise the doctrine to potentially lower the bar for the use of nuclear weapons, adding that Moscow would regard an attack by a non-nuclear state that involved or was supported by a nuclear state as a “joint attack against the Russian Federation.”

Nuclear retaliation, Putin continued, could be considered “once we receive reliable information about a massive launch of air and space attack weapons and their crossing our state border. I mean strategic and tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], hypersonic and other aircraft.”

In simple terms, Putin was delivering a warning to Washington and other backers of Ukraine. The revision to the doctrine comes as Ukraine (a non-nuclear weapons state since it gave up claims to nuclear weapons after the collapse of the USSR) presses the United States for long-range weapons that would allow it to strike deeper inside Russia.

The doctrinal revamp is clearly meant to make Western policymakers think twice as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky presents his “victory plan” to the Biden administration. By brandishing the big stick of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, Putin is implying that the potential costs of providing Ukraine that weaponry may be too high for the West.

So does Putin’s statement move the Doomsday Clock any closer to midnight? Wednesday’s announcement sparked robust discussion online, with arms-control experts trying parse Putin’s language about the thresholds for nuclear retaliation.

Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russian nuclear forces, wrote in a thread on X that there was “deliberate ambiguity” in the announcement, particularly around what doctrine defines as aggression against Russia.

“In the current version of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, there is no distinction between an aggression by nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapon state,” he wrote. “All you need is an aggression that threatens the existence of the state.”

Podvig noted a previous Russian assurance that Moscow would not employ nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states, with one exception: when that state acts “in association or alliance with a nuclear-weapon state.”

Russia’s new red lines may be difficult to perceive, then, but that may be beside the point.

“The language is designed for the very specific situation we are currently in,” Podvig wrote. “We know what these nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear-weapon states are.”

Mariana Budjeryn, researcher at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, suggested the red lines may exist primarily in Putin’s mind.

“There are two noteworthy points of departure from the previous 2020 Russian military doctrine,” she wrote on X. “2020 doctrine allowed the use of NW [nuclear weapons] in response to conventional aggression that jeopardizes the very existence of the state. This is now relaxed to extreme threats to state sovereignty. What does that mean? Who defines what constitutes these threats? Likely, Mr. Putin. Conventional aggression is further specified to include a massive air-space attack. Who defines what constitutes ‘massive’ or massive enough? Likely, Mr. Putin.”

The bottom line for changes to military doctrine, Budjeryn added, “are less than meets the eye but do provide more interpretative room to Russian leadership to define circumstances of nuclear use.”

Putin’s very public move also underscores the performative nature of nuclear deterrence.

“The spectacle here is the key: the act of communicating ‘our doctrine is changing’ now has the world’s attention, with the implicit message: you should be worried,” wrote Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, the director of the Norwegian Intelligence School, whose academic research focuses on Russian nuclear strategy, on X. “The content of Putin’s speech is less spectacular; a number of issues receive more detailed treatment than before, but the granularity of nuclear thresholds remain as blurred as before – as is intended.”

It’s also unclear what the actual revised doctrine might look like, Ven Bruusgaard added.

“Key question is what now? Will we see a document, will it contain more than what Putin has stated? Is this a trial balloon or is this the shebang? If so; curious that changes were so little if one were to go through the motions of updating the doctrine.”

Ultimately, it’s worth remembering as well that Ukraine has already struck deep inside Russian territory, including drone strikes on the Russian capital and a recent attack that hit a Russian ammunition depot. And the results of Zelensky’s visit to the US may soon tell us whether anyone in Washington is listening to Putin’s nuclear talk.