Threat of humiliation could push Putin to ‘go nuclear’

To some observers, the choices facing Vladimir Putin in Ukraine are bleak.

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a government Security Council meeting via a video link at the Kremlin in Moscow earlier in September. Picture: Sputnik / AFP

To some observers, the choices facing President Vladimir Putin are bleak. Following Ukraine’s counteroffensive across the northeast of the country, the Russian leader can either accept a humiliating defeat or double down in the pursuit of military victory.

With limited reserve units, some analysts and former military chiefs believe he could go nuclear in response to battlefield setbacks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin talks to the media while visiting Samarkand on Friday. Picture: Sputnik / AFP

Franz-Stefan Gady, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the more that Ukraine’s army succeeds, the higher the risk that Putin will order the detonation of a tactical nuclear weapon.

Tactical nuclear weapons are of a lower yield than “strategic” nuclear weapons of the sort carried by Russia’s submarines. They are typically intended to devastate enemy targets in a specific area without causing widespread destruction.

Depending on the yield, a tactical nuclear weapon could easily destroy a football stadium, whereas a strategic missile launched from a submarine, land-based missile silo or mobile launcher could take out a city.

A Sarmat nuclear-capable ballistic missile is launched at the Plesetsk testing field in Russia last April. Putin said the launch would make the Kremlin's enemies ‘think twice’. Picture: Russian Defence Ministry via AFP

Should Putin wish to escalate the war to nuclear level, his generals will present him with a number of options ranging in severity.

Even with his presidential powers, however, Putin cannot order a nuclear attack on his own. It is believed there are three nuclear briefcases in total, forming a “triple lock system” that takes about 20 minutes to carry out. Putin has one of them, although it contains a system of codes rather than a nuclear key.

The Russian Defence Ministry headquarters in Moscow . Picture: AFP

The code is sent to Russia’s defence minister and then both codes are sent to the chief of the general staff, General Valery Gerasimov. It is believed that when Gerasimov has all three sets of codes, he can execute orders. Of the least worst options, Gady said that Russia could detonate a tactical nuclear weapon over the Black Sea “to stop Ukraine’s momentum”.

Such a move would alarm the Nato alliance, although it is uncertain what its response would be. A low-yield tactical nuclear weapon could also be used to hit a target on land. It would still have the same effects as Hiroshima – such as deadly radiation that would cause long-term health damage – but on a much smaller scale.

Rescuers dismantleg debris from a Ukraine residential building in Bakhmut, Donetsk, destroyed as a result of missile strike. Picture: Ukrainian Emergency Service via AFP

Although Gady said he judged the risk to still be “quite low”, he said that “Russia has enough remaining conventional long-range strike capabilities to devastate cities such as Kharkiv and Kyiv” if it wanted to. An attack on that scale would force a response from Nato.

An alternative way of punishing the Ukrainians could be to “weaponise” Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant or other critical infrastructure, said Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, an expert in chemical warfare.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in southeastern Ukraine is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and among the 10 largest in the world. Picture: AFP

He said by blowing up the power plant with a conventional missile strike, the outcome would be “six times worse than Chernobyl”. He believes Putin is convinced that Nato would not retaliate with its own nuclear force.

For Putin to deploy nuclear weapons, under Russian doctrine he must believe – or claim to believe – that there is a threat to the existence of the Russian state. Pavel Podvig, one of the world’s leading experts on Russian nuclear forces, said that Russian officials have repeatedly emphasised they would strictly follow the doctrine.

The Times