Russia is considering a change to its doctrine that would allow it to use nuclear weapons against nuclear powers supporting other nations that attack Russia.
President Vladimir Putin said on Sep. 25 that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was attacked with conventional missiles, and may consider any assault supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack by the attacker and the nation supporting it.
The announcement comes just a day before President Joe Biden is slated to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following the U.N. General Assembly in New York City.
Zelenskyy is expected to present Biden with a proposed pathway to end the war and again urge the United States to allow Ukraine to use American missiles to strike deep within Russian territory.
The Biden administration has thus far refused to allow Ukraine to use the American arms it receives in offensive strikes into Russian territory, instead only allowing short-range strikes against military targets.
The potential decision to change Russia’s official nuclear doctrine is the Kremlin’s answer to such deliberations and may sway Biden away from any changes to U.S. policy in the final months of his presidency.
“The conditions for Russia’s transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly fixed,” Putin said.
The Russian president added that a nuclear strike could be ordered in response to a mass assault by “strategic or tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic and other aircraft.”
Russia also reserved the right to use nuclear weapons if its ally Belarus were the subject of such aggression, including by conventional weapons, Putin said.
Putin said the clarifications were calibrated to address the current suite of military threats facing Russia.
Russia’s current published nuclear doctrine, laid out in 2020, allows Russia to use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.
To that end, Russian officials have suggested the war with Ukraine is entering a dangerous phase, with some Ukrainian forces holding onto occupied territory in Russia’s Kursk region and Ukraine losing several key towns in the southeast.
Zelenskyy has therefore urged the West to disregard Russia’s “red lines” and to allow it to strike deep into Russian territory.
Both Putin and Biden have suggested that doing so could trigger a conflict between NATO and Russia that could spiral into a new world war.
Together, Russia and the United States control nearly 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads.
Putin said that maintaining modern nuclear weapons across the triad of land, sea, and air capabilities “remains the most important guarantee of ensuring the security of our state and citizens, an instrument for maintaining strategic parity and balance of power in the world.”
