Vladimir Putin has placed Russia’s strategic deterrence forces — including units in charge of its nuclear capabilities — on high alert in response to “illegitimate western sanctions” over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russia’s president told Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister, and chief of general staff Valery Gerasimov on Sunday that “western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly economic actions against our country [ . . .] but leaders of major Nato countries are making aggressive statements about our country”, at a meeting in the Kremlin shown on state TV.
“I order to move Russia’s deterrence forces to a special regime of duty,” Putin said.
Russian move does not signal intent to use nuclear weapons
Russia’s leader had already issued a coded warning that he was willing to use nuclear weapons as he began his invasion of Ukraine.
Last week, he warned that “whoever tries to hinder us” would see consequences “you have never seen in your history”.
These words were widely interpreted as signalling a threat to use nuclear weapons if the West stood in his way.
The very public shift to high alert status is a way for Moscow to send a warning. Moving to alert status is likely to make it easier to launch weapons more quickly. But it does not mean there is a current intent to use them.
Russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world but also knows that Nato also has enough to destroy Russia if they were used.
But the aim is likely to try and deter Nato support for Ukraine by creating fears over how far he is willing to go and creating ambiguity over what kind of support for Ukraine he will consider to be too much.
