Nuclear threat by Putin will not spook the West

Vladimir Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons against Nato are “deeply worrying”, but appear aimed at intimidation rather than warning of an imminent risk, according to experts.

Mr Putin said yesterday that Russia was ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty or independence were threatened and boasted that its nuclear arsenal was “much more” advanced than that of the United States. It was the latest of his many nuclear warnings since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Patricia Lewis, who heads Chatham House’s International Security Programme, said that, while the threats are chilling, they are not having the desired effect on the West. “Putin’s clearly trying to frighten us, but the West has not been spooked – and that’s a good thing,” she told i. “But the idea that you would use nuclear weapons just seems bonkers for people. You know he’s not going to do anything so stupid.”

Mr Putin has repeatedly invoked the taboo of nuclear weapon use since 2022, but Dr Lewis says he is trying to break Western resolve, particularly after French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that Nato troops could be sent to support Ukraine’s military.

“Putin is perhaps sensing the weakness or uncertainty in the West about the outcome, and the lack of enthusiasm as time goes on,” said Dr Lewis. “He thinks he can out-wait the West. He thinks they’ve got a limited attention span, that they’ll get distracted by the next thing, which might be Gaza now.”

Russia has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal with just under 6,000 nuclear weapons. At the start of his invasion of Ukraine, Mr Putin ordered his military to put Russia’s nuclear deterrence forces on high alert, and in September 2022, said he was prepared to use nuclear weapons as he warned the West: “I’m not bluffing.”

Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson has said that Mr Putin threatened him with a missile strike in a phone call in the run-up to the invasion, telling him it “would only take a minute”.

Florian Eblenkamp, at the Geneva-based International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said that even though the nuclear threats have been empty so far, they were still alarming. “I think it’s safe to say that the risk of nuclear use has certainly gone up since 2022,” he said. “It’s hard to quantify that, of course, but even 1 per cent risk is unacceptable.”