For more than a decade, Kremlin propaganda has threatened the West with a nuclear strike. In spring 2014 Dmitriy Kiselyev, a key mouthpiece for the regime, declared that Russia could turn the US into radioactive ash.
In more recent years, threats of attacks on the US, Great Britain, France, Poland and other NATO countries have been heard almost daily on Russia’s mainstream topical TV shows.
Pro-Kremlin analysts have gleefully amplified the saber rattling. A year ago Sergey Karaganov, chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, wrote that a preventive nuclear strike against Western countries “could save humanity from a global catastrophe.”
The next step in the process of frightening the West was Moscow’s conduct of exercises with tactical nuclear weapons, which, as some analysts have warned, Russian military commanders no longer fear using.
Despite this history, Vladimir Putin, speaking at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum at the beginning of June, called on his followers not to make “vain” nuclear threats, not for the first time denouncing an approach he himself has used. He immediately refused to rule out changes to Moscow’s doctrine on the use of such weapons, which might itself be considered a nuclear threat.
Such variations in tone do not of course mean nuclear blackmail will disappear from the rhetoric of Kremlin officials and propagandists. Russian military analysts argue that a vital part of Moscow’s approach to interaction with the West is that “the enemy must live in fear.”
Regardless of which weapons are used: “It is necessary to make it clear that any encroachment on Russia’s strategic facilities will lead to clearly fatal consequences,” Roman Skomorokhov wrote in an article for The Military Review, a pro-Kremlin Website (presumably a reference to the threat of Ukrainian drone attacks.)
Not everyone in Russia is happy with this constant table thumping. Even among Kremlin-supporting military experts there are those who, while repeating propaganda about an evil West forever plotting to destroy the Russian world, argue against any use of nuclear weapons. Russia would play into its opponents’ hands and “enter the new world order as a defeated power, like Japan and Germany following World War II,” said Alexander Samsonov, another author on the same site.
Amid the subtly shifting propaganda, and developing questions over the wisdom of nuclear attack, the Kremlin has found another way to fuel escalation. At the same economic forum, Putin threatened to supply long-range weapons to allies in regions of the world where they could attack countries supplying armaments to Ukraine.
This threat goes hand-in-hand with the Kremlin’s narrative of a “global confrontation” between Russia and NATO. Analysts from the Putin-backed Valdai Discussion Club warned that the threat of a widespread war should be taken seriously.
The risks of such a conflict will increase significantly should military contingents from alliance countries appear on Ukrainian soil or even allow the use of NATO airfields in the war, Ivan Timofeev, the club’s program director, wrote on its website. Such threats can be viewed as a veiled form of nuclear threat, given that Putin has repeatedly declared that “a global war will bring all of humanity to the brink of destruction.”
At the same time, other propagandists have sought to reassure Russians that the prospect of conventional war with Europe inside Ukraine (presumably a reference to President Macron’s discussion on the possible dispatch of troops) would not be so terrible.
The task of the Russian leadership will be to ensure “a war with individual European countries [in Ukraine], and not with all of Europe,” without moving the theater of military operations beyond Ukraine, according to Alexander Nosovich, editor-in-chief of RuBaltic.Ru.
Unlike previous threats, it seems many in the Russian leadership are seriously considering such a scenario and think it desirable. European politicians have noted that Vladimir Putin is constantly testing the unity of NATO and has grounds to hope the US and European countries will not stand up for the next victims of his aggression.
It is another question whether such an escalation would benefit Moscow. Independent economists recognize that Russia can sustain its current level of military spending for a long time, permitting Putin to maintain the illusion of a “besieged fortress” without provoking too much popular discontent. In the event of a real war with NATO countries, this situation would change.
However, Russian foreign policy depends directly on internal politics. Should the “patriotic consensus” begin to weaken, as happened in the years after the annexation of Crimea, Putin may need a new round of escalation to shore up his support.
That is why it is important to demonstrate the unity of the West in repelling aggression. The Russian leadership must understand clearly that no escalation of the conflict will go unpunished.
Kseniya Kirillova is an analyst focused on Russian society, mentality, propaganda, and foreign policy. The author of numerous articles for CEPA and the Jamestown Foundation, she has also written for the Atlantic Council, Stratfor, and others.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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