Pavel Podvig is an independent research analyst based in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition to running the Russian Nuclear Forces research project, he is also a senior fellow with the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research and a researcher with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. On Tuesday, The Moscow Times published a piece he wrote, outlining the steps that need to be taken to avoid nuclear conflict.
“The threat of nuclear war should not be taken lightly,” Podvig wrote. “However, we should also understand that we are at least several steps away from the point at which that threat will be close to implementation—and that there are things we can do to avoid getting there.”
Firstly, Podvig highlighted the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Kremlin officials are, for now, only threatening nuclear strikes in retaliation against the West. He believes that Russia will not deploy such an attack against Ukraine, based on its current rhetoric, and that a sign of escalation would be a shift in talking points related to nuclear weapons.
“It is one thing for a leader to promise to defend his country in a global confrontation,” he wrote. “It is quite another for him to reach for nuclear weapons because his army is not performing well on the battlefield. There is considerable distance between these narratives, and we will see a dramatic change of rhetoric when it comes to nuclear weapons before we see any movements that could bring us closer to nuclear use.”
Podvig also noted that Russia has yet to physically move any of its nuclear armaments out of storage and onto the battlefield. Escalating toward a nuclear conflict would require the country’s military to begin equipping launchers and aircraft with nuclear payloads, which has yet to happen.
One of the most important steps, according to Podvig, will be the actual decision by Russian leadership to deploy nuclear weapons, which he also explained will be the hardest to detect from the outside. Russia’s own nuclear doctrine forbids the use of such weapons except when aggression from outside forces puts “in danger the very existence of the state.” Western leaders, he explained, can help draw a firm line in this regard.
“The West can make this line harder to cross by stating openly and clearly that it has no intention of ever putting in danger the existence of Russia itself,” Podvig wrote.
Newsweek reached out to the U.S. Department of Defense for comment.
Speaking with Newsweek recently, Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that one scenario that could lead to further escalation in nuclear threats from Russia might be Ukraine making further gains and making its way toward Crimea. The peninsula was infamously annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014.
“That’s the scenario where you could perhaps see Russia get very serious about making nuclear threats,” Bergmann said.
