Putin Begins Fifth Term With Nuclear Drills

As Russian leader Vladimir Putin was sworn in as president for the fifth time on Tuesday, his country’s armed forces made preparations to hold tactical nuclear weapons drills, presenting a dramatic split screen that underlined just how much Russia has changed since Putin was first sworn in as president 24 years ago to the day.

In a speech at his first inauguration in 2000, Putin—the handpicked successor of former President Boris Yeltsin—heralded his election as the first time in the country’s history that power had changed hands in the Kremlin “through the will of the people—legally and peacefully,” and he promised to maintain and develop what was then a brittle democracy. 

Almost a quarter of a century later, with his troops bogged down in the war in Ukraine and his political opponents in exile, imprisoned, or dead, Putin struck a markedly different tone, speaking about the need for a political system that is “strong” and “absolutely resistant to any challenges and threats.” 

He accused the West of trying to pressure Russia with a “policy of aggression” and suggested that he would be open to dialogue if Western countries changed their ways. “Dialogue, including on security and strategic stability, is possible, but not from a position of strength. Without any arrogance, swagger, and exclusivity claims, but only on equal terms and with due respect for each other’s interests,” he said. 

The day before, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that Putin had ordered military exercises practicing for the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in light of “provocative statements and threats” by Western officials. 

While senior Russian officials have routinely gestured to the country’s vast nuclear arsenal as tensions with the West have spiraled, the statement marks the first time Moscow has publicly announced drills involving tactical nuclear weapons.

And on Tuesday, the Ministry of Defense of Belarus, which aided the Russian invasion of Ukraine, announced plans to hold a snap inspection of carrier vehicles for the Russian tactical nuclear weapons that are stationed in the country.

A series of statements by Western officials in recent weeks have drawn Russia’s ire and appear to have provoked this latest round of nuclear saber-rattling. 

On Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov pointed to recent remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron, who on multiple occasions has refused to rule out the possibility of Western troops being deployed to Ukraine. 

France’s ambassador to Moscow, Pierre Levy, attended Putin’s inauguration on Tuesday—despite having been summoned to Russia’s Foreign Ministry the previous day in a move that the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed as an effort at intimidation. Ambassadors from the U.S., U.K., and most European Union countries boycotted the ceremony. 

Macron’s remarks, which NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has downplayed, came as U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries warned in an interview with CBS News on Sunday that Ukraine could not be allowed to fall, because if it does, “then there’s a significant likelihood that America will have to get into the conflict—not simply with our money, but with our servicewomen and our servicemen.”

And in an interview with Reuters last week, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that Ukraine had the right to use long-range weapons provided by the United Kingdom to strike targets within Russia. 

All of this seems to have induced Putin to make a statement of his own, in his own way—by ordering tactical nuclear drills.

Nuclear experts said that the Russian drills were not immediately alarming given that Moscow is making progress on the battlefield in Ukraine. “I think this is a political statement intended ultimately to deter NATO boots on the ground,” said James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who added that the likelihood of Russia deploying a nuclear bomb in the region would rise if Putin began to feel cornered in the war. “By far the most likely trigger for that is a threat to Crimea,” he said. 

Reporting by the Financial Times in February indicated that Russia’s threshold for using a tactical nuclear weapon is lower than the country had previously acknowledged. Potential scenarios that could trigger the use of a tactical nuclear weapon, according to a cache of secret Russian military documents reviewed by the newspaper, include a potential incursion on Russian territory, the defeat of units securing the country’s borders, as well as more nebulous goals of “stopping aggression” and “containing states from using aggression […] or escalating military conflicts.”

In late 2022, U.S. officials began “preparing rigorously,” concerned that Russia might use a nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine, CNN reported in March. 

While strategic nuclear warheads that can be deployed across continents have been subject to a slate of arms control agreements dating back to the Cold War, tactical nuclear weapons have never been subject to any such agreements, and there is little transparency as to the scale of Moscow’s tactical nuclear arsenal. 

There is no singularly accepted definition of a tactical nuclear weapon, but they are generally regarded to be smaller in size for use on the battlefield to gain the upper hand in war. 

Cognizant of the terrifying effect of using a nuclear weapon, which hasn’t occurred since the United States dropped two atomic weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Putin is more likely to deploy a tactical nuclear warhead to stun Western leaders into changing their stance on the war, rather than to gain an advantage on the battlefield, Acton said.

“I think the goal of nuclear weapons would be to terrify us by the threat of escalation,” he said. “At the end of the day, Russia’s nuclear threshold is wherever Putin decides it is.”