This claim served as one of several pretexts for the invasion. Putin warned that if Western countries interfered, ‘Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to consequences that you have never faced before in your history’ – a thinly veiled threat to go nuclear.

Is the bully’s empty bluster coordinated?

Since then, Putin, Russian officials, and commentators on Russian state-controlled and other pro-Kremlin outlets have consistently tried the same tactic, drawing lines in the sand and menacing Western countries with nuclear apocalypse if those lines were crossed. Each time, however, these attempts at intimidation have revealed themselves to be a bully’s empty bluster. The question is: are these threats coordinated, reflecting Kremlin policy choices? Are they simply spasms of frustration that Putin’s patsies sputter when Western resolve dispels the Kremlin’s ultimatums?

We at EUvsDisinfo have looked at the record . In the chart below, you will find the course of Russia’s doomsday diplomacy since its full-fledged invasion of Ukraine. From this collection to statements by high-level Russian officials, political pundits and media commentators, it is evident that Putin frames the discussion. Here is how it works. Putin makes a vague statement about Russia and its nuclear policy towards Ukraine. Then his political underlings and media proxies talk around the goalposts he has moved, filling in the details. Sometimes they may improvise but never overtly contradicting Putin.

Upping the nuclear rhetoric

We can also surmise that beginning in September 2024, Russian state-controlled and other pro-Kremlin outlets and commentators began talking about Russia’s nuclear policy towards Ukraine much, much more than they had done in the past. Most recently, Putin has begun to allege that the West is preparing to transfer nuclear weapons to Ukraine.

‘Dangerous concepts’

After Russia invaded Ukraine, high-level Kremlin officials walked back the idea that Russia would use nuclear weapons. Instead, they stressed that Russian nukes were only defensive and that Russia would never strike first. For example, in late March, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in an interview that no outcome of the war in Ukraine would justify using nuclear weapons. A month later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov echoed the idea, telling the media outlet Al Arabia that any nuclear war was unacceptable and that ‘we should never play with dangerous concepts’.

The pattern held until Putin pushed the envelope again. In September 2022, he alleged that Russia has the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a threat to its territorial integrity. The claim was startling given that Putin claims that Crimea and other occupied territories are part of Russia. A week later, former President Dmitry Medvedev backed up Putin in a Telegram post declaring that Russia had the right to use nuclear weapons if necessary.

A month later, however, Putin walked himself back, saying a nuclear strike against is ‘unnecessary’. A week later, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a lengthy statement stating that Russia remained committed to nuclear arms reduction agreements and urged avoiding risk escalation.

More bluster, more weapons

But no matter Putin’s threats and red lines, Western countries have still provided weapons and aid to Ukraine. In fact, as time passed, bluster has accompanied more Western aid, not less.

In response, individual commentators have had some room to freelance, and even to raise the temperature. In June 2023, Sergey Karaganov, a scientific director at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, wrote a deeply disturbing op-ed urging Russian leaders to use nuclear weapons not just against Ukraine, but against Western countries as well. The idea was that blowing up a few Western cities would restore fear in Russia’s nuclear deterrent and not lead to a catastrophic full exchange.

Too much even for Dugin

None other than the infamous warmonger and quasi-fascist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin rebuked him, writing two days later that ‘Russia is far from having exhausted all the possibilities of victory without the use of nuclear weapons. This is a last resort.’ You must be extreme indeed if someone like Dugin tells you, ‘Whoa, too much.’

Nonetheless, Karaganov’s craziness appears to have kicked up the Kremlin’s rhetoric by another notch. Later in 2023, Putin threat-bragged that a Russian retaliatory strike would leave any adversary no chance for survival. The same month, high Russian officials like Russian Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu widely advertised massive drills by Russia’s nuclear forces.

Nuclear war ‘madness’

As usual, these angry rhetorical gestures were tempered with less threatening statements. In March 2024, Yuri Shvytkin, the deputy chair of the State Duma Defence Committee, called talk of nuclear war ‘madness’ and said that Russia does not intend to use nuclear weapons against anyone.

In September 2024, the temperature of Russian rhetoric rose again. But this time, it continued to rise rather than settling down, as it had done before. One precipitating event might have been the US decision to allow Ukraine to use long-run American weapons to strike inside Russia. While Russian officials denounced the move, official nuclear rhetoric did not truly began to rise until Putin announced, on 29 September, that the Kremlin was updating the Kremlin’s nuclear doctrine to permit pre-emptive nuclear strikes in response to imminent threats.

Exponential rise in threats

From this point, Russian nuclear threats rose exponentially through the end of November 2024, as the chart above shows. Ominously, some commentators conceived excuses that Russia could use to attack Ukraine with nukes, such as the allegation that Ukraine is creating a ‘dirty bomb’. Another commentator asserted that any Ukrainian acquisition of US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles would be an excuse to nuke Ukraine.

Bragging about nuts

On 21 November, Russia attacked the city of Dnipro with an Oreshnik nuclear-capable hypersonic missile. A week later, Putin went to his new go-to move: threat-bragging that Oreshnik missiles turn everything they hit to dust. The same day, he played up Western countries supposedly considering transferring nuclear weapons to Ukraine, saying that ‘Moscow reserves the right to use all means of destruction available to it.’

Once more, Russia is accusing Ukraine of threatening Russia in the same way that the Kremlin is threatening Ukraine. For example, by alleging that Ukraine is building a dirty bomb and trying to get Western nukes, high-level Russian officials appear to be laying the disinformation groundwork for possible nuclear attacks. Commentators, meanwhile, have made wild threats about bombing NATO countries to re-establish ‘deterrence’. Moscow is shouting at a mirror, not at Ukraine.

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