Vladimir Putin ordered exercises with tactical nuclear weapons. What does this mean? (BBC analysis)

The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the General Staff, on the orders of President Vladimir Putin, has begun preparations for conducting exercises in the near future of missile formations of the Southern Military District (SMD) and Navy forces related to “the use of nuclear weapons non-strategic”, or tactical nuclear weapons, as they are also known, reports the BBC.

The exercises, the Ministry said, are being prepared in response to “provocative statements and threats by Western officials” and will take place “soon”. The message did not specify exactly which statements it refers to. The location of the exercises has not been announced either.

Later on Monday, the press secretary of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, said that it was statements by the French president “Mr. Macron, statements by British representatives” and “representatives of the US Senate” about alleged intentions to send armed contingents to Ukraine .

“This is a whole new round of escalating tensions. It is unprecedented, it requires special attention and special measures,” said the representative of the Kremlin, quoted by Interfax.

In late February 2024, the Financial Times reported that it was able to access secret Russian documents that related to Russian tactical nuclear weapons.

From analysis of these documents, the threshold for Russia’s use of this type of weapon is actually much lower than Russian officials have publicly stated.

Pavel Aksenov, a military observer, told the BBC’s Russian-language service: “Tactical nuclear weapons are dangerous because politicians and military personnel can have a false sense of ‘limited’ effect”:

The mere fact of conducting exercises with nuclear weapons cannot be an alarming fact – Russia regularly conducts various types of maneuvers of strategic nuclear forces, practicing various stages of the use of weapons – from deployment to intercontinental ballistic missile launch training. And strategic nuclear weapons are far more powerful and terrifying.

The conditions and circumstances, as well as the consequences of the use of strategic nuclear weapons, are clear to everyone.

Tactical nuclear weapons, as opposed to strategic ones, are dangerous because politicians and military personnel may have a false sense of the “limited” effect of their use.

A tactical nuclear bomb or missile cannot destroy a country, and most likely will not wipe out even a large, modern city from the face of the earth. And the sense of such “limited power” may lower the threshold for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

But on the other hand, the fear of nuclear weapons in the world is so great that their use can lead to very serious political consequences, even if it is “just” a tactical warhead.

Despite the fact that Russia has been waging a destructive and bloody war in Ukraine for more than two years, it maintains partnerships or friendly relations with many countries, including, for example, China or India. The use of nuclear weapons, even during exercises, can greatly complicate these relations.

Nuclear weapons are primarily perceived as a deterrent. And therefore the very mention of nuclear weapons, even tactical ones, is to use them for the purpose for which they were designed – that of deterrence.

Russia has already threatened tactical nuclear weapons during the war in Ukraine – in the spring of 2023, it deployed tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus in response to Western military assistance to Ukraine – highly effective armor-piercing projectiles with depleted uranium cores.

The drills announced now, the Kremlin said, are linked to statements by the leaders of France and Britain regarding their countries’ involvement in the war in Ukraine.

And the signal is very alarming, notes the BBC, which points out, however, that when it sent tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, this did not stop the supply of foreign equipment, including shells.