Losing in Ukraine, is Putin finally down to his nukes?

Just over three years ago, we assessed that it was no longer a question of whether Russia loses in Ukraine, but only when. At that time, Ukrainian deep-strike drones were just beginning to threaten the Russian interior, and Ukraine’s army was backing a cross-border raid into the Belgorod Oblast.

As it still is today, the Russian Army was then stagnant across the front lines in the Donbas and in southern Ukraine.

Moscow’s response at that time? Russian President Vladimir Putin began raising the specter of potentially using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. He authorized the transfer of nuclear weapons to Belarus. He also signaled that he might expand the war to NATO when he withdrew Russia from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

Fast forward to today. Putin is once again rattling the nuclear saber, as his military loses, on average, 30,000 troops a month in Ukraine. Kyiv’s deep-strikes against Russia’s oil and energy sector are pummeling the Russian economy.

In May, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had delivered “nuclear munitions to field storage points in the operational area of a missile unit in the Republic of Belarus as part of military exercises.” Moscow’s message was primarily aimed at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals, but again, it was also aimed at NATO. 

For years now, Moscow has conducted a hybrid campaign against Europe by threatening nuclear sites in the West. Last month, Daniel Salisbury of The International Institute for Strategic Studies observed that “Russia is interested in manipulating nuclear risks to turn up the pressure on Western capitals.”

Russia achieved this by increasing drone activity “around nuclear weapons and nuclear energy” throughout........

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