President Vladimir Putin, who rules the world’s biggest nuclear power, has repeatedly warned the West that any attack on Russia could provoke a nuclear response.
Will Putin use nuclear weapons, how many of those weapons does he control, and how might the United States and the US-led NATO military alliance respond?
Will Putin go nuclear?
Much depends on how Putin perceives the threat to the Russian state and his government.
Putin presents the war in Ukraine as an existential battle between Russia and the West, which he says wants to destroy Russia and take control of its vast natural resources.
Putin warned the West that he was not lying when he said he would be ready to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia. Some analysts say Putin is lying, but Washington is taking him seriously.
By claiming 18% of Ukraine as part of Russia, it increases the space for nuclear threats, as Putin could launch any attack on these territories as an attack on Russia itself.
Russia’s nuclear doctrine allows for a nuclear attack after “aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.”
Many Russians live on Ukrainian territory that Putin has proclaimed Russian, and breaking the post-World War II nuclear taboo would not necessarily change the tactical situation on the ground.
“He’s bluffing right now,” said Yuri Fyodorov, a Prague-based military analyst. “But what will happen in a week or a month is difficult to say, when he understands that the war is lost.”
Asked if Putin was moving toward a nuclear strike, CIA Director William Burns told CBS: “We have to take his kind of threats very seriously given the high stakes.”
Burns, however, said US intelligence had “no practical evidence” that Putin was moving toward the imminent use of tactical nuclear weapons.
WHAT NUCLEAR WEAPONS CAN BE USED?
No Russian official has called for a strategic nuclear weapons attack with the weapons that were designed to destroy cities in the United States, Russia, Europe and Asia.
Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia’s Chechnya region, said Moscow should consider using a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
Tactical nuclear weapons are essentially nuclear weapons used on the battlefield for a “tactical” purpose and which are much less powerful than the large bombs that would be needed to destroy large cities like Moscow, Washington or London.
Such weapons can be launched from aircraft, fired at missiles from land, ships or submarines, or detonated by ground forces.
Although Russia has specialized nuclear forces trained to fight on such an apocalyptic battlefield, it is unclear how its army of regular troops, mercenaries, conscripted reservists and local militias would cope.
WHAT WOULD THE UNITED STATES DO?
As the dominant world superpower, the United States would effectively decide the response to any Russian nuclear attack.
Russia and the United States control 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads. Their arsenals were built during the Cold War and the Soviet Union bequeathed its nuclear assets to modern Russia.
US President Joe Biden’s option would include a non-military response, responding with another nuclear attack that would risk escalation, and responding with a conventional attack that could draw Washington into direct war with Moscow.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington had warned Moscow of specific “catastrophic consequences” if it used nuclear weapons.
Retired general and former CIA chief David Petraeus said that if Moscow used nuclear weapons, then the United States and its NATO allies would destroy Russian troops and equipment in Ukraine and sink their entire fleet in the Black Sea.
Putin reminded Washington that so far only the United States had used nuclear weapons in battle, in the 1945 attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
WHO HAS MORE NUCLEAR WEAPONS?
Russia is the world’s largest nuclear power based on the number of nuclear warheads: It has 5,977 warheads while the United States has 5,428, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Those figures include warheads in storage and withdrawn, but both Moscow and Washington have enough firepower to destroy the world many times over.
Russia has 1,458 strategic nuclear warheads deployed – or ready to fire – and the United States has 1,389 deployed, according to the latest publicly declared data. These warheads are found on intercontinental ballistic missiles, ballistic missiles on submarines, and strategic bombers.
When it comes to tactical nuclear weapons, Russia has about 10 times the number that the United States has. About half of the 200 US tactical nuclear weapons are deployed at bases in Europe.
US tactical nukes have adjustable yields from 0.3 to 170 kilotons (the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was equivalent to about 15 kilotons of dynamite).
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Editing by Timothy Heritage)