WARSAW — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s massive military offensive in Ukraine has prompted European officials on the edge of the war zone to contemplate the prospect that he might use nuclear weapons to achieve his objectives — or even consider an attack on a NATO-allied state.
“Nuclear war is impossible to be won. … This is the rule of warfare, that, actually, it’s the last resort,” a senior European official said. “But, unfortunately, Russians actually somehow behave too lightly about it. And that causes the biggest trouble for us.”
Putin affirmed that principle last year in a joint statement with President Joe Biden and Russian officials, which maintained that they would use nuclear weapons only if they faced “an existential threat for our country.” Yet many Western officials believe Russia has developed so-called tactical nuclear weapons to win military victories in Europe without provoking a major nuclear response from the United States, and Putin’s confidence that his “low-yield” nuclear arsenal gives him free rein in Ukraine raises the odds that the Kremlin believes that Russia has the ability to defeat NATO in a tactical nuclear war.
“I think they think they have [tactical nuclear escalation dominance],” a second senior European official said. “So, I guess that’s also why they have at least hinted at the possibility of using [them] when [Putin] declared this war.”
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NATO allies in Eastern Europe have dreaded the prospect of Russia achieving such an advantage for years. The regular military exercises of Russia and Belarus that presaged Putin’s attack on Ukraine reportedly have included simulated nuclear attacks on the Polish capital of Warsaw, an ominous display that failed to deter Polish authorities from providing military aid to the embattled Ukrainian forces. And Latvian State Secretary of Defense Janis Garisons has described a Russian “nuclear blitzkrieg” as “the most dangerous scenario” facing NATO.
“He really shouldn’t try that option. That would take him to a really dark place,” the second official said. “I would certainly advise Putin not to even toy with any plans or any designs that would take him to counter NATO directly and to hope that he can get away with it.”
Yet, some officials on NATO’s eastern flank have grown more uneasy as Putin’s campaign in Ukraine follows its slow, bloody course. U.S. and European aid has poured into Ukraine, in part due to the belief in Western circles that if Putin were to find it easy to overthrow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, then he might be emboldened to target another country.
And yet, Russian struggles bring their own risks, the first official surmised. “In weeks and months, Putin will need to show some victory in Ukraine, and if he will not achieve his goals in Ukraine, he might go elsewhere,” the first senior European official said. “A wounded animal is the most dangerous. So it’s from Mother Nature, actually, and unfortunately, the behavior of our eastern neighbor is showing that they use all instincts and reflex of the predator, you know.”
Former Ambassador Bill Taylor, who led the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv on two occasions, doubts that Russia would dare to attack any NATO ally. But he takes seriously the idea that Putin might use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine.
“If he does badly, he might resort to, I don’t know, chemical weapons, biological weapons, even nuclear weapons — but I worry he would do it in Ukraine,” Taylor told the Washington Examiner. “If he did it in Poland [or] Lithuania, it would prompt a response, probably nuclear. … Whereas if it were a tactical nuclear weapon on a military target in Ukraine, that’s a harder one. That’s a harder one. I don’t know what NATO does in that case.”
The perceived probability of such an attack on Ukraine has spiked in recent days due to a mix of Russian and Belarusian statements. Russian officials have accused Ukraine of hosting biological laboratories that conducted “experiments with dangerous pathogens [that] could have resulted in new, ethnicity-based pandemics” targeting Russia. The Kremlin also claimed that the recent military campaign against Ukraine is a defensive operation to preempt a Ukrainian attack on Russian-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine.
“Now he’s talking about new false flags he’s setting up, including asserting that we in America have biological, as well as chemical, weapons in Europe, simply not true,” President Joe Biden said Monday. “They are also suggesting that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine. That’s a clear sign he’s considering using both of those.”
Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko made his own contribution to the tense atmosphere in an interview last week with a Japanese journalist. Lukashenko, who allowed Putin to launch the attack on Kyiv from Belarusian territory, said that Zelensky must acquiesce to Putin’s demands before it is too late.
“If Zelensky refuses to do it, then trust me, he will have to sign an act of capitulation in a short while,” Lukashenko said. “Russia will not lose this war. … How does a war end when one side wins? Japan knows it better than I do.”
That remark is open to interpretation: Did Lukashenko mean that Putin would push for an unconditional surrender, or did he signal further that Russia would use nuclear weapons to achieve that victory, as American forces used nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II?
“It can be read in both ways … in terms of percentage, I would say 50-50,” a third senior European official said. “Lukashenko is a guy who feels the situation pretty well. He is extremely good at cheating and lying, but sometimes he sends a very clear message. So, it’s not excluded that he specifically wanted to send this message that ‘You, Japan, know better what it means if you are not willing to capitulate.'”
Biden has tried to empower Zelensky to resist Russian attacks, while stopping short of giving any aid that he thinks might provoke a Russian counterstrike against NATO positions.
“We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine,” Biden said earlier this month. “Direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent.”
That aversion to involvement in Ukraine is the corollary to trans-Atlantic warnings that any attack on NATO would provoke the Western allies. But the risk-averse rhetoric could be perceived as a green-light in Moscow to use more vicious tactics in Ukraine, according to prominent critics.
“Putin will use mini nukes if much more powerful US and NATO continue to display fear of it and play defense,” former Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev, a Putin critic, wrote on Twitter. “He is escalating step by step and learns that he can get away with more. A cat and mouse, where lion chooses to play mouse. Pathetic.”
Taylor, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, agreed that Putin would be willing to use such weapons if he thought it necessary to win the war. “If he fails, he’s probably out of a job,” said Taylor. “They probably kick him out one way or the other, if he fails.”
By the same token, the first senior European official said, it’s unclear if Putin’s subordinates would carry out such an extreme order in the face of a conventional military defeat in Ukraine. “At some point in the chain [of command], this could break,” he acknowledged. “There is always the human factor.”
The more fundamental problem for Putin is that the Western sanctions imposed in retaliation for the assault on Ukraine have delivered an economic blow that will cripple Russia over the years to come if U.S. and European officials decline to ease the pressure.
“They will be weakened [substantially], but you know, it will not happen overnight,” the official said. “After 10 years, Russia will have a [diminished] economy, and I really doubt that Russia will pose a real threat, after 10 years. But we need to live these 10 years.”
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Taylor, for his part, emphasized that NATO has the nuclear weapons needed to defeat any of the “blitzkrieg” operations that some allies fear.
“If he attacks NATO, there will be a military response back. if he attacks NATO by nuclear weapons, there will be a nuclear response back,” he said. “It is true [that Russia has a] quantitative advantage in small nuclear weapons. That’s what they have. There’s no doubt about it. But we’ve got enough. We have the capability to respond, and I’m convinced that we would.”
