According to Russian media outlets, Vladimir Putin has stated that his nuclear red line would be a potential Ukrainian long-range missile strike deep into Russian territory. If the Ukraine were to acquire the permission to use these weapons from the United States, Moscow has stated that the response will be in the form of nuclear weapons.
Putin has been seeking to distance the war from the operations of normal public life ever since the beginning of the Special Military Operation, so this move comes as no surprise. Ukraine has been seeking permission to utilize long-range missiles ever since the war began in order to inflict real infrastructure damage on Russian assets, but the efforts have been consisently hindered by the U.S. and its partners, a state of affairs that has angered both Ukrainians and supporters of the Ukraine.
However, Putin’s new policy towards long-range missiles means that he believes any usage of them will bring NATO directly into the conflict with Russia. Both sides are unwilling to bring the conflict to this kind of severity, so for now, the current state of things is satisfactory for both sides.
In Kiev, Zelensky’s chief of staff has called Putin’s policy ‘nuclear blackmail.’
“In my opinion, this is yet another bluff and demonstration of Putin’s weakness. He will not dare to use nuclear weapons because that will make him a complete outcast,” Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to Ukraine’s internal affairs minister, said on X.
In the West, the responses have been unsurprisingly negative towards Putin’s new policy. Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, accused Putin of playing mind games. “This is a psychological PR operation, by the Kremlin, without much substance. It is designed to scare leaders & voters of countries supporting Ukraine,” he wrote.
Sokov, a former Russian diplomat, said there was a strong sense of frustration in Moscow that the West appeared deaf to its many nuclear warnings.
He said that when Russia staged three rounds of exercises this year to simulate preparations for the launch of tactical nuclear missiles, there were complaints in the media and among experts that Western countries were not paying attention.
“So now they decided to strengthen the signal,” Sokov said. “Putin decided the West is like small kids, and you have to explain every small thing because they just don’t get it.”
Sokov said he was concerned about “loose talk” among politicians and commentators who argue that the West has crossed a series of Russian red lines with impunity – by supplying Ukraine with tanks and F-16 fighter jets, for example – and that Moscow’s warnings can therefore be ignored.
In fact, he said, the West had yet to breach two red lines that Russia had spelt out clearly: sending NATO troops to fight in Ukraine, and letting Ukraine fire Western long-range missiles into Russia.
“How can we say how (Putin) is going to react, if so far we have not actually crossed any Russian red lines?” he said in a phone interview, arguing that such an approach was based on guesswork, not data.”I’m really concerned about all the loose talk, precisely because we run head-on into a situation which is completely unfamiliar to us … If you do not factor in the risks, you are likely to have a very unpleasant surprise.”
Source: Reuters
