The nuclear option
Putin has repeatedly said Russia could use “all available means” to protect its territory, a clear reference to its nuclear arsenal.
Moscow’s nuclear doctrine states that it could use those weapons in response to a nuclear strike or an attack with conventional forces threatening “the very existence of the Russian state,” a formulation that offers broad room for interpretation and abrupt escalation.
Some Russian hawks urged nuclear strikes on Ukrainian bridges and other key infrastructure to force Kyiv and its allies to accept Moscow’s terms.
Bronk said he doesn’t expect Russia to resort to that, arguing it would backfire.
“Actually using them generates almost no practical benefits at all and certainly nothing to compensate for all of the costs, both in terms of immediate escalation risk — irradiating things they want to hold on to and be part of — and also pushing away the rest of the world,” he said.
It would be certain to anger China, which doesn’t want the nuclear taboo broken, he added.
Hill also noted that Russia got some pushback from China and India, who were worried about Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling. She added that Putin sees nuclear threats as a powerful political tool and will keep issuing them in the hope of forcing the West to withdraw support for Ukraine.
“Putin’s just hoping that everybody’s going to blink,” she said. “He’s not going to give up the idea that he could use a battlefield tactical nuclear weapon.”
But Hill added: “If he thought he would get the results that he wanted from it, he would use it.”
Stanovaya, who has long followed Kremlin decisionmaking, also said Putin’s nuclear threat is no bluff.
If he sees that Ukraine can attack in a way that threatens Russian territory and lead to Moscow’s defeat, “I think he would be ready to use nuclear weapons in a way that he can show that it’s a question of survival for Russia,” she said.
Palestinian militants in Gaza launched rockets at southern Israel and Israeli aircraft struck targets in the coastal enclave early Thursday after a gunbattle triggered by an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank killed 10 Palestinians.
The bloodshed extends one of the deadliest periods in years in the West Bank, where dozens of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the start of the year. Palestinian attacks on Israelis in 2023 have killed 11 people.
The Israeli military said Palestinian militants fired six rockets and two antiaircraft missiles from the Gaza Strip toward the country’s south early Thursday. Air defenses intercepted five of the rockets and one landed in an open field, according to the military. The missiles did not hit their targets. The attacks were not immediately claimed by Palestinian militant groups.
Israeli aircraft then struck several targets in northern and central Gaza, including a weapons manufacturing site and a military compound belonging to the Hamas militant group that rules the enclave. There were no reports of injuries in Israel or Gaza from the rocket attacks or strikes.
The violence comes in the first weeks of Israel’s new far-right government, which has promised to take a tough line against Palestinians, and as security forces step up arrest raids of wanted militants in the West Bank. Israel says the raids — begun in the wake of a series of deadly Palestinian attacks last spring — are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future assaults.
But the operations have shown few signs of slowing the violence and Wednesday’s resulted in one of the bloodiest battles in nearly a year in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, raising the likelihood of further bloodshed.
“We have a clear policy: to strike terror powerfully and to deepen our roots in our land,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a meeting of his Cabinet. “We will settle accounts with whoever harms Israeli citizens.”
Israeli police stepped up security in sensitive areas on Thursday, while Hamas said its patience was “running out.” Islamic Jihad, another militant group, vowed to retaliate.
A day after a raid in January on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank that killed 10 Palestinians, a Palestinian shot and killed seven people outside a synagogue in east Jerusalem.
On Thursday, police said security guards at the entrance to a West Bank settlement shot and lightly wounded a woman who police said attempted to stab the guards.
Among the 10 killed in Wednesday’s raid in Nablus were Palestinian men aged 72 and 61, and a 16-year-old boy, according to health officials. Scores of others were wounded. Various Palestinian militant groups claimed six of the dead as members. There was no immediate word on whether the others belonged to armed groups. Officials also said a 66-year-old man died from tear gas inhalation.
In response to the raid, a strike was called across the West Bank, and schools, universities and shops all shut down in protest. Schools and universities in Gaza and most shops in east Jerusalem were also closed.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.
The Israeli military said it entered Nablus, the West Bank’s commercial center and a city known as a militant stronghold, to arrest three militants suspected in previous shooting attacks. The main suspect was wanted in the killing of an Israeli soldier last fall.
Wednesday’s four-hour operation left a broad swath of damage in a centuries-old marketplace in Nablus. In the Old City, shops were riddled with bullets, parked cars were crushed, and blood stained the cement ruins. Furniture from the destroyed home was scattered among mounds of debris.
The influx of wounded overwhelmed the city’s Najah Hospital, said Ahmad Aswad, the head nurse of the cardiology department.
In one emotional scene, a medic pronounced a man dead, only to notice the lifeless patient was his father. Elsewhere, an amateur video showed two men, apparently unarmed, being shot as they ran in the street. Military spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said the armed forces were looking into it.
As the bodies were paraded through the crowd on stretchers, thousands of people packed the streets, chanting in support of the militants. Masked men fired into the air.
The fighting comes at a sensitive time, less than two months after Netanyahu’s new hard-line government took office. It presents an early challenge for Netanyahu, who on top of spiraling violence is also facing waves of protests from Israelis against a plan to overhaul the country’s justice system.
The government is dominated by ultranationalists who have pushed for tougher action against Palestinian militants and vowed to entrench Israeli rule in the occupied West Bank, including by ramping up settlement construction on lands Palestinians seek for their future state. Israeli media have quoted top security officials as expressing concern that the harder line could lead to even more violence as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approaches.
About 60 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem this year, according to a tally by The Associated Press.