Russia’s conventional forces are severely depleted. Still, Western leaders should expect the ebb and flow of Russian nuclear threats to continue. Russian president Vladimir Putin and other senior figures have since dialled down their nuclear rhetoric: “There is no sense in for us, neither political nor military,” Putin remarked in late October. Efforts by US defence officials to engage their counterparts in Moscow over Russia’s manufactured ‘dirty-bomb’ scare have shown promise in this regard. So, the goal of Western policy should be to disincentivise the use of nuclear weapons: to make the Russian leadership understand that nuclear restraint is always the preferable option. Nuclear escalation will be a possibility for as long as Russia continues its war of aggression. After the mass murder, rape, and deportations committed by Russians in – at least – Bucha, Irpin, and Mariupol, who would doubt them? And even the recent terror bombing of residential areas and energy infrastructure has not diminished the Ukrainian people’s defiance. Just this week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated that peace negotiations with Russia could only start once Ukraine’s territorial integrity had been restored. Where the Kremlin has undoubtedly failed is in coercing Ukrainians into surrendering to Russian occupation. Concerns about escalation seem to have played a role these decisions. But Western countries still withhold some aid, including ground-attack missiles with longer ranges, fighter jets, and Western-produced tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. These allowed Ukrainian forces to reverse the Russian army’s advance on Kyiv, frustrate its campaign in the east, and eject occupying forces from Kharkiv. They have, however, supplied increasingly sophisticated weapons. Pointing to the risk of nuclear escalation, Ukraine’s international supporters continue to abstain from direct military intervention, whether through boots on the ground or a no-fly zone. The Kremlin has achieved at most one and a half of these goals. According to researchers Anna Clara Arndt and Liviu Horovitz, Russia calibrates its nuclear rhetoric in pursuit of three distinct goals: “to deter foreign military intervention dissuade foreign aid to Ukraine and coerce the government in Kyiv”. Russia’s nuclear weapons are an integral part of its escalation-management toolkit, and frequent referrals to its nuclear potential are standard practice. Nuclear rhetoric from Russia has been the norm throughout this war. Genocide, however, is a certainty if Western leaders, paralysed by the Kremlin’s nuclear talk, were to abandon Ukraine. The risk of nuclear escalation may have increased since 24 February, but it is still extremely remote. Three weeks before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I suggested there “would not be a nuclear war, but a war with an undeniable nuclear dimension.” This remains true today – despite some recent claims to the contrary.
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