Reading Russia’s Nuclear Threats

This commentary distills insights from Project RuBase conducted in collaboration with Stephan de Spiegeleire and generously supported by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation.  All viewpoints, errors and omissions are attributed to the author alone.

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has issued well over a hundred nuclear threats. The tough talk put to bed Moscow’s reputation for responsible nuclear “custodianship,” sparking debate in the West over the meaning of the Kremlin’s intimidating nuclear rhetoric. 

Yet, the conspicuous gap between the bark and bite of the Kremlin’s nuclear saber-rattling raises fundamental questions not only about how to decipher Moscow’s coercive threats, but about how to formulate an appropriate Western response. President Vladimir Putin’s initial cryptic threats caught international experts and policymakers by surprise, prompting restraint amid fear of a tactical nuclear detonation by Moscow to stave off Kyiv’s counter-offensive in 2022. Once those fears proved unfounded, many observers concluded that the Kremlin’s nuclear threats lacked credibility and chastised Western policymakers for delaying vital military assistance to Kyiv. This optimism about the hollowness of Putin’s nuclear threats, however, has been subsequently tested by Moscow’s successive setbacks on the battlefield and Ukraine’s increasingly bold airstrikes deep into Russian territory. The mounting pressure on the Kremlin has raised the specter of a turning point in the war, elevating both the credibility of Moscow’s intimations of a nuclear backlash and risk of inadvertent escalation. Parsing the opaque nuclear rhetoric, therefore, is critical to managing fear and resolve in standing up to foreign aggression across the international system. 

Unfortunately, several realities exposed by the war in Ukraine confound making strategic sense of Putin’s nuclear threats. The fast-paced innovation conducted during the war is blurring established notions of thresholds between nuclear and non-nuclear escalation. Moreover, just as the “fog of war” is becoming increasingly dense, the prospects are dimming that respective strategic signals sent by Russia and the West can be received as intended. Entrenched suspicion—compounded by the evisceration of established confidence-building forums and volatility of post-conflict remilitarization—mar the promise that Russia and the United States/NATO can seize on even the lowest-hanging fruit for risk reduction. In addition, the Russian approach to coercion diverges significantly from classic assumptions about deterrence and escalation, presenting different meanings of red lines and methods of nuclear signaling. As they struggle to sift through what is old and new in this complex environment, Western analysts and policymakers should turn to applying novel digital tools for deconstructing the internal logic and gravity of Russia’s nuclear threats, while prioritizing resilience to blunt Moscow’s aggressive opportunism and deter future nuclear adversaries.

The Morphing Character of War

The changing character of war shapes the context for interpreting Russia’s nuclear threats and the ensuing risks of inadvertent escalation. Moscow and Kyiv have shifted from reliance on heavy mechanized units to the use of cheap and accurate swarms of drones and robots to inflict nearly 80 percent of the destruction on the battlefield. This is tied to a swelling ecosystem of semi-autonomous, AI-supported dual-use tools. Accordingly, Western and Russian defense experts now openly refer to the emergence of a “transparent battlefield,” whereby the strategic significance of core operational elements to traditional warfare—mass, maneuverability, survivability, sensor-shooter links, centralization, and linear R&D-to-acquisition processes—are fundamentally contested by the application of emerging technologies.

Take for example strikes into an adversary’s hinterland that are rapidly blurring the distinction between conventional and nuclear operations. By projecting power with drones and sabotage, dubbed as “long-range sanctions” by Ukrainian officials, Kyiv has effectively taken the fight deep into Russian territory, including attacks on strategic bombers used to deliver nuclear capabilities. Although these small-scale, intermittent assaults do not constitute the classically envisioned surprise nuclear first-strikes, they underscore the vulnerability of traditional basing modes to inspired planning. This development complicates the calculus of the survivability of Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces, possibly instilling fear of a declining strategic trajectory. Here, the cumulative costs incurred by piecemeal strikes on Russia’s strategic assets may justify the risks associated with launching a preventive nuclear attack against a non-nuclear foe. 

Russia’s strategic predicament stands to worsen with the proliferation of increasingly cheap, autonomous long-range cruise and ballistic missiles that carry ever larger payloads. As NATO members and other countries along Russia’s periphery come to rely on such accessible offensive missiles as a hedge against Moscow’s future aggression, they could readily excite the latter’s enduring insecurity over strategic depth. The anxiety could place greater pressure on the Kremlin to turn to limited nuclear first-strike options early in future low-level militarized conflicts with a diverse set of non-nuclear rivals and, possibly, their Western nuclear allies. The latter could entail following through on Moscow’s nuclear threats, including precipitous resort to tactical nuclear fait accompli in Ukraine or elsewhere along Russia’s immediate periphery. Growing domestic pressure on the Putin regime may only reinforce this calculus.

Russia’s repeated nuclear threats to deter Kyiv from retaking the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and strikes on Ukrainian spent fuel facilities, also can induce inadvertent escalation. The attacks elevate risks of radiation release, underscoring the existential stakes of the war for Kyiv. At the same time, Moscow’s nuclear intimidation may inadvertently encourage Kyiv to perpetuate the deep attacks on Russia’s strategic assets described above. The blowback of advanced disinformation or false flag operations, that blanketly attribute attacks on the nuclear facilities to Kyiv, also fortify Moscow’s own nuclear rhetoric in this dangerous spiral. 

The accelerating speed of innovation at the operational level also aggravates problems of strategic misperception and miscalculation. Armed conflict in the shadow of nuclear weapons is not new, with mutual deterrence among nuclear weapons states and their proxies presumably placing a ceiling on escalation. Yet, as psychological and political burdens mount to keep pace with each revolution in the compressed operational innovation-countermeasure cycle—occurring over several weeks on the contemporary battlefield—misperceptions could intensify just as confidence in escalation dominance wanes. The dynamic adds pressure on decision-makers to jettison prevailing assumptions of a linear progression from low-intensity conflict to nuclear war. This can include taking short-cuts up the metaphorical ladder of nuclear escalation, as well as precipitous action across multiple domains of competition that can catch adversaries by surprise. Both pathways risk creating less predictable and more complex opportunities for sudden escalation that can confound judicious assessment of threats and resolve among rivals.

Uncertainty Compounded by Resentment

New scenarios for nuclear escalation are Janus-faced. Just as AI-supported technologies disrupt established norms and forms of warfare, they introduce opportunities to deflect or counter the effects, including capabilities to detect network vulnerabilities and preempt an adversary’s surprise attack. However, the abilities to distinguish these scenarios, as well as risk from uncertainty in Russia’s nuclear discourse, are more difficult sans a robust Euro-Atlantic security architecture. Even with progress towards a ceasefire in Ukraine, the fluidity of future disengagement arrangements and post-war remilitarization will raise the bar for transparency and verification. Yet, the breakdown in strategic communication and deep political distrust sowed by the invasion put diplomacy on the back foot when proactive confidence-building will be most needed.

The gutted bilateral US-Russian arms control architecture makes it increasingly difficult to identify nuclear thresholds amid the “fog of war.” The expiration of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty, the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control agreement, effectively removed carefully crafted transparency protocols. For all its limitations, the reciprocal on-site inspections of deployed and non-operational systems, as well as data exchanges and confirmation procedures, provided a technical baseline for monitoring obligations and detecting strategic deception. The loss of these intrusive verification mechanisms, coupled with the lull in substantive military dialogue over strategic stability, deprives the leaderships of established channels for holding each other to account. 

At the same time, the default to unilateral measures for interpreting the other’s strategic behavior portends a yawning “understanding gap” during a period of fluid rearmament and warfare transformation. Invigorated investment in ubiquitous space-based and cyber capabilities, as well as mass arsenals of cheap AI-supported long-range drones and missiles, are obscuring lines of escalation and muddling risk assessments. They present new challenges to uncovering novel and non-linear pathways to nuclear escalation, unpacking vulnerability and restraint across domains, and establishing norms for keeping humans in the loop of nuclear command and control. Accordingly, strategic stability talks of the future will require leveraging opportunities for innovative formats while summoning concerted political will to convey credible commitments to implement unprecedented transparency.  

The toxicity to Russia’s relations with the West fuels mutual intransigence and suspicions that can stymie even the best intentions of both sides to look beyond the intimidating nuclear rhetoric. Moscow has made it clear that it will only consider re-engagement in mutually beneficial strategic stability and arms control negotiations with a reboot of the overall US-Russia relationship; it will not return to pre-2022 approaches that compartmentalize strategic issues to calibrate risks of escalation. But problems for parsing nuclear threats run deep, as the intensity of mutual resentment sap the political will needed not only to transcend assumptions of hostile intent and worst-case planning, but to envision new processes and endpoints to guide constructive engagement. Even after the war is settled, strategic distrust will loom large over military regeneration and the interpretation of stability across Europe, rendering any notion of forgiveness associated with reciprocity in deescalation hard to fathom. One side’s sincere gesture of restraint could be readily misconstrued as a bargaining ploy, thus elevating the political costs to taking a chance on compromise or synchronizing unilateral de-escalatory steps. Amid the intense acrimony, shared interests alone at avoiding catastrophe, that is otherwise required for coordinating nuclear risk reduction or the non-interference with respective national technical means of verification, will be hard pressed to carry the day. The bar will be significantly raised for realizing altogether new horizons for arms control to stem AI-driven strategic challenges, especially if the parties embrace alternative approaches to coercion and restraint. 

Schrodinger’s Cat

Faced with intense uncertainty and protracted distrust between Russia and the West, experts and decision-makers must increasingly rely on sound assumptions and analytical frameworks to deduce links between the ends, means, and ways of nuclear diplomacy. However, the current state of debate over nuclear deterrence in Russia’s war on Ukraine resembles the famous thought experiment from quantum mechanics whereby the observed phenomenon—deterrence—is observed to be effective and ineffective at the same time. While referencing common understandings of credibility, resolve, and restraint, proponents of alternative theories are stalemated over lessons for deterrence and stability drawn from partial evidence. For example, one camp downplays Putin’s nuclear threats as cheap talk or has confidence in deterrence. The lack of a nuclear detonation is treated as restraint, ascribed either to Russia’s propensity to bluster out of weakness or to the sobering effects of nuclear weapons. Critics of this view, however, presume that the Kremlin is resolved to use its vast arsenal of non-strategic nuclear weapons. Moscow is simply looking for the right moment to marshal a nuclear response to repeated Western transgressions of its red lines, the mounting toll of the war, or a proclivity to impose victory. But is the absence of nuclear war amid rampant nuclear threats evidence of stability or a sign of the Kremlin biding its time? By leaning into common understandings of nuclear coercion and deterrence, this debate raises fundamental questions that cannot be conclusively addressed by narrow focus on capabilities and behavior.

As Albert Einstein famously opined in response to Schrodinger’s thought experiment, the key to transcending the indeterminacy of external measurement rests with exploring hidden variables and inner-workings—in this case the content, context, and coherence of Putin’s coercive threats that do not comport with basic precepts of classic Western deterrence theory. Recent research demonstrates that his sporadic literal references to “red lines” seem less about making nuclear deterrence explicit or demonstrating credibly, and more indicative of muddled musings intended to grab attention and stoke confusion.[1] Putin uses positive (threats to employ force), negative (references to seeing no need to respond with excessive force or nuclear weapons), and dismissive (denials of possessing red lines and claims of being misunderstood) rhetorical constructions that together obfuscate meaning. His more prevalent implicit red lines, however, appear “consistently inconsistent” regarding threats, lines, and consequences. Similarly, Putin’s explicit nuclear discourse neither systematically responds to US nuclear threats and posturing, nor hues closely to traditional Soviet practice of following the apogee of a crisis or presenting as a fait accompli attendant to conventional offensives. Rather, Putin has been equally prone to issue red line and nuclear threats before, during, and after prospective external trigger events—including upticks in US nuclear signaling, NATO lethal military assistance, Ukrainian deep strikes, or Western sanctions. Aside from a few discrete periods—particularly in fall 2022 and fall 2024—Putin’s red lines also generally do not overlap with his explicit nuclear discourse. Rife with ambiguity—both in content and timing—Moscow’s red lines and nuclear threats hardly appear to be part of concerted efforts to demonstrate resolve as expected from classic approaches to deterrence.  

Without better insight into Putin’s strategic rationale for nuclear blustering, it is hard to know if Western deterrence has been effective or simply lucky. This is especially challenging as alternative logics seem to be at play with Putin’s nuclear and non-nuclear coercion. A deep dive into the construction of his red line and nuclear threats, for example, reveals distinct patterns in threats, thresholds, and consequences. When it comes to his explicit nuclear intimidation directed at the West, there is a pronounced combination of clarity in rhetorical threats and targets, coupled with ambiguity of consequences. This resembles the famed deterrence logic associated with “threats that leave something to chance” premised on manipulating risks. Yet, Putin’s frequent open-ended red line allusions are marred by opacity across all internal dimensions that challenge established modes of demonstrating credibility, resolve, and risk-taking. They are more consistent with the classic Russian “reflexive control” strategy. The latter is characterized by hyping uncertainty and confusion; shaping an adversary’s strategic predicament; and choreographing its responses through indirect, subtle, and deniable influence gestures. This form of “cognitive warfare” is rooted in opportunism that betrays a reticence for nuclear risk-taking. With the transformation of warfare that is blurring operational pathways for horizonal and vertical escalation, it remains unclear which strategy—opportunistic probing or competition in risk-taking—informs Russia’s specific nuclear threats and how they will be received under these changing strategic circumstances.   

Towards an Analytical Refresh

Thankfully, there are better ways to interpret Russia’s imprecise nuclear intimidation than by strictly monitoring capabilities and debating the Kremlin’s intent. The growing complexity and acrimony also warrant a rethink of the analytical benchmarks by which we judge deterrence and stability. The latter necessitates relaxing assumptions that mirror-image an adversary’s strategy, turning focus on capturing the reality of patterns in what, how, when, under which conditions, and to what effect Russia’s threats are issued in the first place. 

A holistic understanding of Moscow’s nuclear saber-rattling starts with a “3-D” mapping of the threat landscape. Advances in digital tools and AI information processing offer new avenues for illuminating multidimensional patterns in adversarial strategy and behavior to inform the selection of specific theories of the case for assessing nuclear threats. With judicious adherence to analytical guardrails, frontier large language models (LLMs) in particular offer promise for refining datasets at scale, devising robust substantive taxonomies to extract nuanced patterns in discourse, and integrating multi-media sources to visualize non-linear insights. Leveraging AI with subject matter expertise in this regard augurs well for greater fidelity at identifying trends in Russian discourse and behavior to expose the contours of change to Russia’s way of war. Doing so can facilitate empirically grounded, wide-angle understandings of operative logics, thresholds, domains, and modalities of escalation and restraint surrounding Moscow’s nuclear allusions. This can illuminate non-obvious points of convergence to inform coordinated risk reduction, if not deeper forms of constructive engagement as the relationship with Russia evolves.

There also is a need to explore creative methodologies for reassessing alternative pathways to nuclear escalation. The dynamic strategic landscape challenges prevailing assumptions of reciprocity, cost-benefit analysis, and risk-taking at the crux of nuclear bargaining. Leaning into empirically anchored knowledge to inform AI-generated “trusted” scenarios, red teaming, and interactive simulations will help to expand analytical prisms. This can prepare analysts, defense planners, and decisionmakers to distinguish conditions ripe for high-risk nuclear escalation from those of horizonal cross-domain opportunism. They will be well positioned to comprehend how Russia’s lessons from the “transparent battlefield” in Ukraine are bumping up against those gleaned in the West, China, and elsewhere in order to discern the strategic significance of future nuclear threats.

Finally, Western leaders should adapt their own playbooks to calibrate appropriate responses. Given the opportunistic rationale behind Putin’s red line threats, NATO allies should place resilience at the forefront of strategy. Western leaders can blunt Russia’s opportunities to exploit vulnerabilities by strengthening critical infrastructure and supply chains through redundancy as well as preempting Russian disinformation. Resilience can complement strategies of deterrence by denial and punishment by shrinking the surface area of hybrid attack and easing recovery to bid up the internal risks to Russia’s embrace of reflexive control. With little to show from its opportunistic gambits, Moscow would be forced to settle for fewer or episodic gains, if not discouraged altogether from mounting futile offensives. It also facilitates flipping the script to advance favorable Western asymmetries, especially in the space, energy, and information domains, as well as in emerging markets for foreign military assistance. Such competitive strategies will compel Moscow to confront the limits to risk-taking below the nuclear threshold. At the same time, by remaining attuned to punctuated signals conveyed by the Kremlin’s overlapping red line and nuclear threats, Western decision-makers can gain greater purchase on the dangers of pushing too hard amid changing strategic and political landscapes. The greater clarity surrounding these episodic nuclear threats should alert policymakers to reassess their own commitment to risk-taking, while integrating conspicuous elements of reassurance to bolster the credibility of open-ended escalation options.