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PARIS — Vladimir Putin and nuclear weapons have a long history. In 2022, three days after launching his invasion of Ukraine, the Russian president said he had put the army’s deterrent forces on high combat alert. France took the threat seriously enough to exceptionally deploy all of its nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines. It was not announced at the time, and we only learned about it recently.
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Since then, the nuclear threat has been a recurring theme from Russian leaders. Moscow propaganda broadcasts calculate how long it would take a nuclear missile to reach London or Paris. Dmitry Medvedev, the former “moderate” president turned warlord, regularly promises the apocalypse for Russia’s adversaries.
Putin also uses the nuclear threat, as he did in his State of the Nation address on Thursday. “We have weapons that can also strike their territory,” he said, referring to NATO countries, and particularly France without naming it, following President Emmanuel Macron’s statements on Monday about sending troops to Ukraine.
Strategic ambiguity
Nevertheless, Putin must always be taken seriously, as we saw with the Ukraine invasion itself, which few people thought possible. Of course nuclear weapons are no light matter for either Russia or the West. And this raises the question of how a nuclear country can “lose” a war. An unanswerable question, because nuclear weapons are by definition weapons of strategic ambiguity.
Yet since Putin’s first warning in February 2022, Western commitment to Ukraine has only increased, and all of the Kremlin’s red lines have been crossed. At each stage of type of weaponry supplied — air defenses, tanks, aircraft, long-range missiles, etc. — Western capitals have hesitated, for fear of going too far. And one by one, the taboos have fallen.
The current threat is both a repetition of what we’ve already seen, and something different. Sending ground troops, which Macron has “not ruled out”, is obviously of a different nature than sending equipment — even if it doesn’t involve combat forces, which Macron forgot to mention on Monday.
A Soviet-era mentality
The reality is that, presumably, there are already Western personnel in Ukraine, but not officially. Making them official would be a signal to Russia that Europe will not let Ukraine down, despite the difficult times and the risk of American backlash.
Putin could not let Macron’s statement slide without a strong response.
Putin’s reaction is therefore predictable. He could not let this statement slide without a strong response, especially two weeks before his reelection. He knows that in Russia as in the West, the threat of nuclear war raises the fear of world destruction.
He also knows, due to his Soviet-era mentality, that it’s the ultimate weapon, not just another element in his war toolbox. That is perhaps the only reassuring element in this anxiety-inducing climate.
