List of Russian Nuclear Threats 1999-2024

Can you hear the Wolf?

May 31, 2024

Washington DC 30 May 2024

2024 is a year of living dangerously. Nearly have of the world’s population will cast their votes in elections this year. A number of democracies are in the balance, including the United States.

Russians are masters of propaganda. They have convinced the free world that democracy is not all that it’s cracked up to be and that autocracy is preferable because it is efficient and preserves “traditional values”. Recent polling among 28 democracies found that the following themes of Russian propaganda have taken root:

Society is broken - 57%
The country is in decline - 58%
The economy is rigged to advantage elites - 67%
The country needs a strongman willing to “break the rules” - 49%
- in order to “take the country back” 63%

Reducing their enemies Will by sowing doubt through propaganda is far more cost effective than war. They might really hit the jackpot if an enemy is so radicalized it turns on itself or its allies.

To keep international military pressure off their failing genocidal war in Ukraine, the Russians have kept up a steady drum beat of ominous threats of military escalation. Western states have taken these seriously, being very careful to stay under what they think might be Russian thresholds that would trigger a direct confrontation with Moscow.

Russian propaganda has worked. The West been deterred from the most effective forms of assisting Ukraine. 800+ days into the 3 day war and the West is only now allowing Ukraine to use certain munitions in operationally relevant ways - in other words to use their long range precision systems to strike back at their attacker across the border into Russia.

In the past 20 years of American led expeditionary warfare, America never publicly threatened the use of nuclear weapons to get its way. Some accounts have reported a private conversation a few days after 9/11 when the US Secretary of State implied to the Pakistani President, Gen Musharraf, America might consider nuclear weapons if Pakistan did not allow US access to its territory to get to landlocked Afghanistan. That is a far cry from now routine public declarations concerning the use of the ultimate threat.

Even before they launched their second invasion into Ukraine, the Russians issued a preventative nuclear threat. This revealed their concern about their weakness to NATO retaliation. The fact that the nuclear drumbeat has continued ever since has seriously diminished the deterrent and only further highlighted their vulnerabilities.

UNW has explained that Russia could have put the retaliatory escalation burden on the US by using a single small nuclear weapon. Had the US not responded in kind, Moscow would have a green light to do whatever it wanted. Alternatively, a nuclear response would have aimed to deescalate any further Russian response. To achieve that it would have had to be of a certain size and target set that complicated Russian decision making. Thats the military theory. The global political reality would have been like the world’s response to Israel’s war on Hamas on steroids. Everyone would have condemned the US - not Russia! Russia would have then had a choice whether to escalate a further step - a nuclear attack on NATO forces in a build-up area in Poland perhaps. The whole thing unravels from that point forward. So an initial US conventional response would have been chosen and that weakness would have greatly aided Russia.

It is not until you see all of Russia’s nuclear threats in historical context that their intent becomes clear. It has been propaganda all along. And why not? That is their true strong suit and really it is all they have. They were not going to use unconventional nuclear warfare. That was too bold, even for Putin. If his personal back is against the wall then he would likely issue the order. Whether it would be followed at that point is another discussion. Likely not if Hitlers orders at the same point in time are anything to go by.

Putting their nuclear propaganda in context opens the door to another realization. Not only were they never going to use the weapon, the more they issued nuclear threats the more they proved their weakness to the world. It is the proverbial ‘boy who cried wolf’.

UNW recently found a consolidated list that puts Putin’s nuclear propaganda shell game into perspective. This is not even a new development. Tellingly, they have used it a few times before the Ukraine invasion and then abused the technique since then to the point of irrelevance.

Russia is weak. It is losing. The only way for the Putin regime to survive is for the triumph of his strategic propaganda plan - where his allies re-take the Oval Office and Congress and hand Ukraine to him on a platter.

Trump has encouraged Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” with Ukraine. Prior to that position, he pretended to have a master plan for peace.

“As president, I will bring back peace through strength," Trump said. "I would have a peace deal negotiated within 24 hours."

The only way that can be achieved is giving it to Russia.

"I know Zelenskyy very well... I would tell Zelenskyy, ‘No more. You got to make a deal.’ I will have the deal done in one day. One day," Trump responded.

Putin responded

“We surely hear that Mr. Trump says he will resolve all burning issues within several days, including the Ukrainian crisis. We cannot help but feel happy about it.”

This points to another key factor in nuclear saber rattling from Moscow. Why would you risk nuclear war when your allies will just give you the win?

The List

This list is hot-linked to relevant articles. Hat tip to Vatniksoup for pulling this altogether.

Unconventional Nuclear Warfare

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Unconventional Nuclear Warfare

List of Russian Nuclear Threats 1999-2024

Can you hear the Wolf?

The List

Russia Invades Ukraine

Discussion about this post