Putin lowers Russia's threshold for using nuclear arms

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday lowered Russia's threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, a long-planned move whose timing appeared designed to show the Kremlin could respond aggressively to Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory with American long-range missiles.

The decree signed by Putin implemented a revised version of Russia's nuclear doctrine that Putin described in televised remarks in September. But the timing was clearly meant to send a message, coming just two days after the news that President Joe Biden had authorized the use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine for strikes inside Russia.

Asked whether Russia could respond with nuclear weapons to such strikes, Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesperson, repeated the new doctrine's language that Russia "reserves the right" to use such weapons to respond to a conventional-weapons attack that creates a "critical threat" to its "sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Ukraine's military said it hit ammunition warehouses in the Bryansk region of Russia on Tuesday, and Russia's Ministry of Defense said in a statement that Ukraine used six of the U.S. missiles in the attack. The claims could not be independently verified.

If confirmed, the strike would be first time that Ukraine had used the weapon, known as the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, to strike inside Russia.

The new doctrine asserts that Russia could use nuclear arms in the event of an attack by a nation backed by a nuclear power. The doctrine's publication Tuesday appeared to be the latest suggestion from the Kremlin that Russia could use nuclear weapons to respond to attacks by Ukraine carried out with U.S. support, and that the response could be directed against U.S. facilities as well as Ukraine itself.

"Aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies by any nonnuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state is considered as their joint attack," the document says.

Peskov, speaking at his daily conference call with reporters, pointed to this section of the revised doctrine, saying, "this is also a very important paragraph."

Russia's previous doctrine said its nuclear deterrence was directed mainly against countries and alliances that have nuclear weapons. And it had a higher threshold for the kind of conventional attack that could trigger nuclear use, specifying that such an attack must threaten "the very existence of the state."

"Nuclear deterrence is aimed at ensuring that a potential adversary understands the inevitability of retaliation in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies," Peskov said.

Still, for all the strident rhetoric, the war in Ukraine largely appears to be going Putin's way -- and Western officials have previously said that they would be most worried about Moscow's using nuclear weapons if the Russian military is on its back foot.

On the battlefield, Russian forces are advancing in eastern Ukraine, while Ukraine struggles with recruitment and morale. And in geopolitics, Putin has also been making gains: His phone call last week with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany broke two years of diplomatic isolation by the biggest Western countries, while the election of Donald Trump as incoming U.S. president has raised hopes in Russia of a Ukraine peace deal on the Kremlin's terms.

From the first day of his invasion in February 2022, Putin has been trying to use the threat of Russia's enormous nuclear arsenal to deter Western military aid to Ukraine. He has had only limited success, with the United States leading a coalition that has dispatched tens of billions of dollars' worth of modern tanks, artillery systems and missiles.

But Putin has sought to draw a new red line at the possibility of Ukraine's using Western missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory. To the frustration of Ukrainian officials, Biden long refused, given what U.S. officials said was the risk of a violent response by Putin and the limited impact that the use of those missiles could have on the battlefield.

But Biden changed course recently after Russia's surprise decision to bring North Korean troops into the fight, U.S. officials said.

In September, Putin warned that if the United States and its allies permitted Ukraine to fire missiles deeper into Russia, they would put his country "at war" with NATO.

In the lead-up to Biden's decision, some U.S. officials said they feared that Ukraine's use of the missiles across the border could prompt Putin to retaliate with force against the United States and its coalition partners. Other U.S. officials said they thought those fears were overblown.

In response to Biden's recent decision, Russian officials have warned in some of their strongest statements yet about the risk of nuclear war.

On Tuesday, Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the defense committee in Russia's lower house of parliament, said Biden "will slam the lid of his own coffin and drag many, many more people with him."

Dmitry Medvedev, the outspoken former Russian president and vice chair of Putin's security council, said in a social media post that under the new nuclear doctrine, the use of missiles provided by NATO countries in attacks by Ukraine against Russia "can now be qualified as an attack on Russia" by NATO nations.

Medvedev, whose threats often go beyond the Kremlin's official pronouncements, added: "In this case, the right arises to launch a retaliatory strike with weapons of mass destruction against Kyiv and the main NATO facilities, wherever they are."