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.
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.
The problem is Russia has the very real capability of really screwing up a good chunk of the world before they get wiped off the map. It's kind of scary if im being honest.
At this point I think Putin has to have serious doubts that he could use a nuke and have it actually work. He's up against both western tech and his own corruption.
They made a lot of claims about their military capabilities. However their war with Ukraine has shown those to largely be lies propped up to hide that their oligarchs have emezzled the money.
I'm starting to wonder how nuclear capable they actually are these days.
Nukes and ICBMs are extremely complex devices. They also require extremely specialist servi e work to remain functional. Even worse, the only people who can actually check that work are the ones doing it.
Russia hasn't detonated a nuke in decades. I wouldn't be surprised if most of their arsenal are now duds. The money embezzled, while boxes were ticked. Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if many of their ICBMs just wouldn't launch.
Russia's nuclear capabilities are likely a paper tiger, and Putin likely knows this. Until they try and use them, they are scary. If they try and they fail, they are in a VERY bad situation.
Putin is many things, but he's not stupid. It would take a LOT more pressure from nato for him to even consider using nukes.
Ironically Biden was the one who knew Russia would attack Ukraine and spent MONTHS preparing Ukraine for it, which is why it wasn’t over in 3 days. We have also prepped for nuclear escalation. This is what real leaders do. Trump would just continue to give Putin a blow job.
Unless the nuclear fallout is proven to effect a NATO ally and trigger Article 5, no one would give a shit if Russia nuked itself on its own territory. And no one other than the US can afford to unleash all of their their nuclear arsenal, costing billions of dollars and their only defense deterrence, in one go to light the powder keg and be left without nukes to defend themselves.
However, you are correct, Russia would cease to exist if they retaliated disproportionately and a single molecule of NATO territory was effected as a result.
Countries with nuclear weapons include China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and possibly Iran. And while I don't think any of them want a nuclear war, if a nuclear war breaks out, I can imagine three or four of them siding with Russia.
China might side with Russia simply because they're sick of the US trying to hem them in militarily through the "island chain" strategy. The US has the entire coast of China surrounded by military bases, which could be used to cut off China's trade routes, which is an existential threat to China because their economy is so dependent on exports.
North Korea has a historical beef with the US, and Russia helped North Korea survive through a period when the US tried to starve them.
India and Pakistan have a long-running dispute over Kashmir, and if India backs the US, it's possibly Pakistan will back Russia just to oppose India.
And Russia and Iran have been solid military and economic allies for a while now, working together in recent conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
If their intelligence agencies are worth anything, they would understand that any action unless directly against Russia would be suicide not only for them but also us. Nukes are a losing strategy no matter what.
The US has the entire coast of China surrounded by military bases, which could be used to cut of China's trade routes, which is an existential threat to China because their economy is so dependent on exports.
What is it with you people?!?!
"it's not fair that the US DARES to talk to other countries anywhere near us!?!?"
This is the exact same excuse putin used for invading Ukraine, because no country is allowed to make their own decisions on who they talk to unless Russia and China get a veto.
We have power they cannot begin to comprehend, they need to learn a lesson from Putin, "Don't start nothin, won't be nothin", because if there's one thing the US is famous for, it's ending wars definitively.
Putin, you can't invade another country killing thousands of their civilians and then get upset when that country comes into yours and starts taking your territory. Using a nuke here doesn't make you look strong, it makes you look extremely weak.
It's worse than that. Russia knows they can never use nukes preemptively, it's why they have their policy.
Russia is one of the most centralized countries in the world, everything revolves around Moscow, all political and economic power, all administration, without Moscow they know Russia is dead.
The whole point of a nuke is that it eats cities, their paranoia that Moscow would be hit during the cold War was extreme, they put incredible amounts of money into air and missile defenses and demanded carve outs to the abm treaties specifically for Moscow.
Because Russia isn't a country, it's an empire ruled from Moscow, and it Moscow was destroyed it would instantly cease to be a country.
Basically, if things reached a point where Moscow's control over the rest of Russia was at risk, that's when you'd see them start to negotiate.
It's a bit more nuanced than that. Russia would immediately be at war with every other nuclear state, but there wouldn't necessarily be retaliatory nuclear strikes unless Russia began firing missiles at nuclear states too. The video I linked is a from a Danish professor who describes really well the dynamics of misusing nuclear weapons.
On a serious note, a lot of people here seem to forget that any nuclear weapon hurts the entire planet and all of us in it. It is weird to see people who supposedly care about injustices suddenly go 100% in on devastating the ecosystem and mass murdering inocents (since you know, nuclear bombs are traditionally not used on military targets).
Nukes are such a terrifying weapon that after being used, the world collectively shit its pants and said "maybe we've gone too far". Truman fired a general who suggested using nukes in the Korean War, and everyday military personnel stopped a misunderstanding from causing a nuclear exchange in the Cold War.
Country X doing a shitty thing did not entitle countries A-Z to also do that shitty thing. If it was terrible of X to do it, it's terrible when anyone else does it, and they don't get a pass just because of how shitty X was.
So, "threatens the existence of the state" means "I might personally lose power over this".
It wasn't that long ago troops marched towards Putin, and while he meant to teach the lesson "go against me and die" what he really taught everyone was "next time don't negotiate and don't believe anything I say".
All it takes is letting some fall guy with a personal grudge against Putin get close to him with a gun.
Everyone gets to pretend that they didn't want him dead, and the fall guy gets killed immediately after but got to settle his score first.
Without Putin the focus goes back on making money, and Russia stops invading people and threatening nuclear Armageddon.
The people around him are definitely considering if he's worth more as a myth than a man at this point.
I seem to recall a big kerfuffle around a decade and a half back about Russia not actually knowing what became of a whole bunch of nuclear weapons in the aftermath of the USSR collapsing. There were also rumors of Soviet nukes being sold off to various unsavory groups. It really wouldn't surprise me to find out there was some truth to that.
I have also heard that ICBMs and the like require regular expensive and specialized maintenance in order to remain functional. Knowing what we now know about Russia what do you figure the odds are that some general or other decided those maintenance funds would be better used to line their pockets since the odds of actually using those nukes were so low?
Almost all nuclear weapons require quite a bit of expertise to maintain over time. If they got sold off 30 years ago, chances are 99% that they’re mostly good for lighting off as a dirty bomb and not much else at this point.
MAD is like 2 men standing in a lake of gasoline, one man has 3 matches, the other has 5, both threaten to use their matches if the other uses his.
Russia is saying they’ll use their matches if the other guy throws a rock at him. The fucking situation is stupid and I hope that my ashes get blasted to a different planet when the bombs go off. I don’t want to even be a part of this stupid planets carbon cycle anymore.
They're not being actively held hostage in that there's no giant prison with all their families in it.
They are being held hostage because of the implication. The whereabouts of their family is well known so are they going to toe the line? Of course, because of the implication.
I guess they're relaxing the policy, since they've hinted previously that they viewed attacks on Russian territory to be a threat to the existence of Russia and would use nukes in response. But they didn't.
If their nuclear bombers went airborne the second Ukraine troops crossed their borders people would've taken them seriously. It would've shown how serious they were. But here we are, weeks after the invasion onto Russian soil, and their strong man argument is changing a few words on paper. It's not very impressive or convincing.
The only material changes I can see would be for Russia to move nuclear weapons into occupied Ukraine and/or resumes nuclear testing. Every other escalation does not result in a change their stance that can be perceived from outside Russia. Either of these events would cause an enormous elevation in the readiness and deployment of NATO forces and would risk uncontrolled escalation. How desperate is Putin now?
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.
Oooh.... Someone's realized that a substantially smaller country with Jewish Nazis in the government is way more competent when it comes to specialized military operations?
This is more a sign of desperation than a sign of either strategic military confidence or a booming economy.
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.
Dude, you're making yourself more important than you actually are.
No one cares about you.
Edit: if you're quoting something, it's kind of expected that you copy the correct quite... duh...
Dude, you're making yourself more important than you actually are.
No one cares about you.
Seriously. The West keeps legit forgetting the whole thing is even going on, and then waking up and sending $50 billion and then getting distracted again.
The bravery of the Ukrainians and the 20:1 outmatchedness of the Russians in total industrial/technological capacity are responsible for the failure of the invasion. Not any kind of urgent priority or strong level of care on the Western side in any location west of Poland.
How could you have missed that the only reason Russia started on their glorious 3 day special military operation was to liberate Ukraine from evil Nazi Jews ?