Russia to Carry Out Exercises for Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his country’s military to test its readiness to use tactical nuclear weapons—a step the Kremlin said was a response to recent comments by Western officials, including warnings that European powers could do more to help Ukraine in its fight with Moscow.

Exercises involving Russia’s navy and air force, along with units in the country’s southern military district that oversees Crimea and other parts of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces, are to begin on an undisclosed date, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the drills are a response to some Western officials’ suggestions that restrictions on Kyiv’s use of Western weapons should be lifted, and that Ukraine’s allies could significantly increase their involvement in the war if Russia threatens major Ukrainian cities.

“This is a whole new level of escalation of tensions, it’s unprecedented, and of course it requires special attention and special measures,” Peskov said.

Peskov singled out French President Emmanuel Macron, who has said that the West should consider sending ground troops to Ukraine if Kyiv is close to defeat. A spokesperson for Macron declined to comment.

The Kremlin spokesman also took aim at the U.K., whose Foreign Secretary David Cameron said last week that Ukraine has the right to decide how to use long-range weapons provided by his country, appearing to back away from a policy banning the use of Western-supplied arms to strike Russia.

Moscow said Monday that it had summoned the U.K. ambassador and warned him that Russia may respond to any Ukrainian attack on its territory using British weapons with attacks on British bases and military equipment.

The Pentagon criticized Russia’s announcement of military drills, and said it hadn’t seen any change in Moscow’s strategic force posture.

“This is an example of the kind of irresponsible rhetoric that we’ve seen from Russia in the past,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said on Monday. “It’s completely inappropriate, given the current security situation.”

The announcement of Russian military drills comes as more than a dozen member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization take part in the security alliance’s largest military exercise since the Cold War, focused on countering threats from Russia.

In recent weeks, Russia has been advancing on the battlefield, taking a string of Ukrainian villages in the eastern part of the country around Avdiivka, a city its forces captured in February after months of heavy fighting.

Putin has hinted on numerous occasions at his willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and Western officials have cited the risks of nuclear escalation as they weigh what kinds of weapons to supply to Ukraine.

Ahead of his re-election for a fifth presidential term in March, Putin warned again that Russia was prepared to use nuclear weapons if it feels threatened, citing the comments by Macron.

“They started talking about the possibility of sending NATO military contingents to Ukraine,” Putin said. Russia’s opponents, Putin said, “must after all realize that we too have weapons that can hit targets on their territory.”

Macron said in a press conference after meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Paris that France isn’t seeking regime change in Moscow.

“We are not at war with Russia or the Russian people,” Macron said. “It’s the Russians who want to attack the democratic regime in Ukraine, and who have constantly expanded this conflict.”

Days into the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin instructed the military to raise the alert level of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces. But experts say the work normally required to raise alert levels—including dispersal of mobile missiles and patrolling by nuclear submarines—wasn’t actually conducted by Russia.

“There was more staff added to the command posts,” said Andrey Baklitskiy, a nuclear weapons expert at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. “No other notable things were detected.” Baklitskiy notes that the readiness level hasn’t been publicly reversed since then.

Tactical nuclear weapons are short-range weapons designed for use on the battlefield or to take out critical infrastructure, such as power stations. Unlike strategic nuclear weapons—a weapon of last resort designed for the destruction of large cities—they have never been constrained by any formal arms-control agreement.

Russia has previously conducted military exercises using strategic nuclear weapons, as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched rockets. Analysts say that in the coming exercises, it is unlikely to actually test tactical nuclear weapons.

Coupled with Moscow’s response to the Western warnings, they say the drills are meant to send another message to Ukraine’s allies that Russia is ready to use everything at its disposal.

Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the U.N.’s Institute for Disarmament Research, said the exercises will likely involve Russia taking tactical nuclear weapons out of storage facilities in the south and practicing placing them—or dummy versions of them—in delivery systems.

He said it is just as likely that Russia won’t handle any nuclear weapons in the drills, and focus instead of testing the readiness of ballistic rockets.

“The timing of the announcement suggests that it’s designed to be a signal,” he said.

Write to Matthew Luxmoore at [email protected]