Since New START expired February 6 with no successor, what restrains the world’s two largest arsenals is, in the words of Russian International Affairs Council president Dmitry Trenin, fear alone: “intimidation... remains the foundation of peace among nuclear powers.” What has sharpened the Russian discussion since is specific: Ukrainian deep strikes on facilities like the Votkinsk strategic-missile plant, 1,400 km from Ukraine, which builds Iskander, Oreshnik, and Topol-M missiles; drones reportedly transiting NATO airspace; and the Russian Defense Ministry’s April 15 list of drone-production sites in twelve countries—of which Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev wrote that it “must be taken literally” as “a list of potential targets for the Russian armed forces. ... Sleep well, European partners!”
Listen closely, and the Russian signals come in two registers. From the state: conditional warning, inside published doctrine. First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told TASS May 19: Western “provocative moves in the nuclear sphere” raise “the danger of a head-on clash between NATO and our country, with potentially catastrophic consequences.” Ambassador-at-large Rodion Miroshnik, May 21: “The line beyond which the use of all possible types of weapons is justified is becoming increasingly thin.” OSCE envoy Dmitry Polyansky, on a U.S. podcast: “They have already crossed all the red lines, and it’s a matter of time if it continues like this…. It will be too late.” Each statement is tethered to the 2024 doctrine’s stated conditions and to political decision.
From outside the chain: advocacy. Sergey Karaganov urges “reconsider[ing] the priorities for preemptive strikes, beginning with non-nuclear options, followed, only if necessary, by nuclear ones as a last resort,” against “locations where elite decision-makers are concentrated, particularly in Europe"; Tsargrad owner Konstantin Malofeyev proposed a 20-25 kiloton strike on western Ukraine. And the state has fenced the advocates off: at a June 4 St. Petersburg forum panel, in which Scott Ritter participated, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin stated that Karaganov’s proposals are not Russian policy—after Ritter, a critic of the “Karaganov Doctrine” by name, invoked the P5’s January 2022 reaffirmation that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
