On 19 November President Putin signed an executive order approving “the fundamentals of Russia’s state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence.”
This declaration is essentially an update of a document that issued in 2020. It sets out Russia’s nuclear-weapon-use doctrine.
Among the most important updates is this sentence – “The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) the Republic of Belarus as participants in the Union State with the use of conventional weapons, which creates a critical threat to their sovereignty and/or territorial integrity.” – in which “a critical threat” replaces “when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy” (and explicit mention is made of Belarus). The replacement can only be interpreted as a widening of the circumstances under which a nuclear response to a conventional attack will be considered.
Two other circumstances under which a nuclear response will be considered are also new. These are (1) the use of nuclear weapons or other types of weapons of mass destruction by an adversary against military formations and (or) facilities of the Russian Federation located outside its territory; and (2) the receipt of reliable data on a massive launch of air and space attack weapons (strategic and tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, unmanned, hypersonic and other aerial vehicles) and their crossing of Russia’s state border.
As already widely reported, the 2024 document also states that aggression against Russia and (or) its allies by any non-nuclear-weapon state with the participation or support of a nuclear-weapon state will be considered as a joint attack. It can be assumed that Moscow has Ukraine and the United States in mind.
The document also identifies ten “main military risks that might evolve into military threats”. That is four more than in 2020. Three of the new risks are:
- the creation of new or the expansion of existing military coalitions (blocs, alliances), leading to the advancement of their military infrastructure to the borders of the Russian Federation [an obvious allusion to potential Ukrainian membership of NATO];
- the actions of a potential adversary aimed at isolating part of the territory of the Russian Federation, including blocking access to vital transportation communications [an obvious allusion to the Kaliningrad enclave];
- the planning and conduct of large-scale military exercises by a potential adversary near the borders of the Russian Federation.
A fuller analysis of the revised doctrine, by the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs, can be found here.
It may be worth noting that although, according to NATO’s “Strategic Concept”, the circumstances under which NATO might have to use nuclear weapons are “extremely remote”, officials explain privately that these could include their use in response to a Russian conventional, non-nuclear attack on one or more of the Baltic states. This near-parallel with Russia’s readiness to use nuclear weapons against conventional attacks under certain circumstances underlines the desirability of a positive US, UK, French and Russian response to China’s 2024 call for a P5 no-first-use pledge. But, alas, there is currently no sign of any prospect of that.