This article was reprinted with permission after being published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Vladimir Putin, the president, signed a decree on November 19 that updated and expanded Moscow’s nuclear strategy to allow the use of nuclear weapons in the event of an assault on Russia by a non-nuclear artist supported by a nuclear power.
The move comes only days after President Joe Biden officially gave Ukraine , permission , to employ U. S. supplied long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, to reach deep inside Russia. ATACMS have a range of some 300 meters.
Russia may consider using nuclear arms after receiving “reliable information about the starting of a massive assault against it and weapons crossing the Russian boundary,” according to the updated doctrine.
Moscow will , consider , “aggression by a nonnuclear status — but with the participation or help of a nuclear-armed state — as a combined attack on the Russian Federation”, the document says, without clarifying whether such an aggression may immediately trigger a nuclear response.
According to experts, one significant change is that the anger does not need to pose an existential threat to Russia, with the country’s level for a reply being lowered to anger that poses a” critical danger to the independence and/or territorial integrity.”
When asked if a normal Ukrainian attack with U.S. missiles might lead to nuclear action, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded that it might, noting that the revised passage even threatened Belarus’s territorial and sovereignty.
The list of states and military alliances that can be used to “deter nuclear “deterrence” is also expanded, as is the “list of military risks for the elimination of which nuclear deterrent steps are carried out,” according to the file.
Sergei Lavrov, the country’s foreign secretary, downplayed the value of the nuclear doctrine’s changes, stating that Moscow is “determined to do everything possible to prevent a nuclear combat” in Brazil on November 19.
But, the European Union’s best minister, Josep Borrell, described the changes to Russia’s atomic theory as” fully irresponsible”.
” It is not the first day that Putin plays the nuclear gamble”, he said in Brussels, saying “any call for nuclear war is an irresponsibility”.
In Washington, a National Security Council director said that the White House was” never surprised by Russia’s news” and that the United States did not plan to modify its own nuclear theory in reply.
The review of Russia’s atomic theory was first mentioned by Putin on September 25, 2024, at a , meeting , of the Russian Security Council amid debate around allowing Ukraine to reach deep inside Russia.
Peskov, asked whether the shift in philosophy — which was announced as Russia’s war on Ukraine marked its 1, 000th time— was linked to the reported walk by Biden, said the update was released “in a proper manner” based on the” present situation”.
Following weeks of Kyiv’s request to be allowed to employ Western-donated long-range missiles to attack military targets deeply inside Russia, the reported U.S. choice has not yet been officially confirmed by the White House.
Britain and France have likewise provided Ukraine with their jointly developed, 250-kilometer-range Storm Shadow weapons, but they have so far declined to permit Kyiv to use them against target further into Russia.
However, on November 18, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said once again that Germany did not take its Taurus weapons, which have a 500-kilometer variety, to Ukraine.
