Putin nuclear

Asked if Americans should be worried about nuclear war after President Vladimir Putin said he was putting his strategic forces on alert, Biden gave a calm "no" ...

"They continue to want to move on Kyiv, to capture Kyiv," he said. U.S. officials called the order "dangerous" and "escalatory." "We have long agreed — the United States and the Russian Federation — that a nuclear use would have devastating, devastating consequences," said Price. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin "is comfortable with the strategic deterrence posture of the United States and our ability to defend the homeland," Kirby told reporters. The Pentagon continues to "review and analyze and monitor" Russia's posture, said Defense Department spokesman John Kirby. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington sees "no reason" to change the alert levels of the U.S. nuclear force, and a senior defense official said the Pentagon had not seen any palpable shift by the Russians despite Putin's Sunday announcement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's implied threat to turn the Ukraine war into a broader nuclear conflict presents President Joe Biden with choices rarely ...

But that is little comfort for the countries in Europe that are within range of those weapons. But it is so rare for an American or Russian leader to issue an implied nuclear threat, particularly in the current context of the war in Ukraine, that the risk of it going nuclear cannot be dismissed. “This is a very dangerous moment in this crisis, and we need to urge our leaders to walk back from the nuclear brink.” In Russia, like in the United States, the president has sole authority to order a nuclear strike. According to U.S. nuclear doctrine, the weapons’ alert level is central to their role in deterring attack. During the Cold War, U.S. and Russian weapons were not only more numerous but also in a higher state of readiness. Putin on Sunday told his top defense and military officials to put nuclear forces in a “special regime of combat duty,” but it was not immediately clear how that might have changed the status of Russian nuclear forces, if at all. Some arms control experts have argued for taking ICBMs off high alert by separating the missiles from their nuclear warheads. The bombers have remained off alert ever since. The 400 deployed U.S. ICBMs are armed at all times. The Biden administration was assessing Putin’s move, which it said unnecessarily escalates an already dangerous conflict. “Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” they agreed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered nuclear forces on alert Sunday, adding a complicated and concerning dimension to the widening conflict in Ukraine.

Russia has nearly 6,000 warheads, slightly more than the United States’ approximately 5,400, according to the Federation of American Scientists. How dangerous, it’s hard to assess,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. U.S. officials have refused to say whether the Pentagon’s posture has changed in response to Putin’s announcement.

On Sunday, Vladimir Putin put his nuclear forces on special alert due to "aggressive statements" from the West. The U.S. called it "yet another escalatory and ...

However, Putin has invoked Russia's nuclear options in an announcement ahead of Thursday's invasion: "Even after the dissolution of the USSR and losing a considerable part of its capabilities, today's Russia remains one of the most powerful nuclear states. "Part of an escalation strategy could be to punish the European member states of NATO, which are delivering arms to the Ukraine. This might involve putting nonstrategic nuclear forces in and around Europe on alert and possibly even using single strikes with conventional ammunition to underscore the threat. The threat, he concluded, was "certainly not a game-changer." The Russian army is suffering serious logistical issues around fuel and ammunition, and the Ukrainians are fighting back harder than Moscow seems to have anticipated. According to Krause, Putin's decisions will be guided by the success of his Ukraine invasion—and as things stand, that's not going very well. The principle is, Why do we need the world if Russia won't be in it?"

Russia has said it deployed extra personnel to its nuclear forces, upping the geopolitical stakes as its invasion of Ukraine entered its fifth day.

“First off, the lack of change is a Good Thing! It doesn’t alter the fact Putin made an explicit nuclear threat on Sunday, but it does dial down the aggressiveness somewhat,” he said. Another option is to explode a nuclear weapon somewhere over the North Sea between Britain and Denmark and see what happens,” he said. I certainly hope he doesn’t do that,” said Cancian, who also worked on nuclear nonproliferation in the Department of Energy. Basically, he can negotiate a ceasefire that respects Ukraine’s sovereignty or continue the bloodbath of a conventional war.” But I’m a citizen of Russia and its head of state. “What I would tell you is we’ve seen Mr. Putin’s announcement.

In a striking departure from Cold War doctrine, experts say, Russia is asserting its right to use "tactical" nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

"The fact that we are even having such a discussion is reflective of the realization that yes, Putin might do the unthinkable." I think now he knows that all of that is at risk." Charismatic videos shot by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have helped galvanize commitments for weaponry and stiffer sanctions from Germany and other members of the NATO alliance, of which Ukraine is not a member. And even if Putin orders a nuclear strike, history suggests it's possible his own military might refuse to comply. The following year, Putin said he had considered putting Russian nuclear weapons on alert to protect ethnic Russians in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia annexed in violation of international law. "The Russians were driven to this," he told me, "because the current Russian army is, comparatively, a shadow of the Soviet army." If your traditional military is weak, in other words, tactical nuclear weapons offer a major form of compensation. But among the specialists who study Russia's nuclear arsenal, there has been a long-running debate about another scenario: the possibility that Russian forces might use so-called tactical nuclear weapons, which have shorter ranges and smaller explosive yields, to seize a battlefield advantage, especially in conflicts they are losing. To do otherwise would've played into Putin's hands, enabling him to recast his aggression toward Ukraine as part of a larger civilizational conflict with the West. And it's important not to overstate the practical significance of Putin's decision to put his nukes on a higher alert. He ordered Russian nuclear forces to shift to a higher state of alert he called "special combat readiness." Then, on Sunday, Putin shattered the complacency of any Westerners who believed they were a safe distance from the battlefield. During the first few days after Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine, the images from the conflict were both urgent and remote.