Russia’s nuclear doctrine urgently needs to be revised to allow a nuclear response to any major military aggression against the country, former Kremlin adviser Sergey Karaganov stated on Wednesday.
The former foreign policy adviser to the deputy head of the Russian presidential administration told the Kommersant daily that the existing document is “woefully outdated” and no longer serves as an effective deterrent.
Adopted in 2020, Russia’s nuclear doctrine does not provide for pre-emptive nuclear strikes and envisages the use of nuclear weapons only in “exceptional cases” in the face of a “threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the country. According to Karaganov, this approach has rendered it nearly useless and has effectively “excluded” the nuclear deterrence factor from Russia’s military and foreign policy arsenal.
“We have allowed the situation to deteriorate to a point when our adversaries believe we will not use nuclear weapons under any circumstances,” the political scientist said. “Having nuclear weapons without being able to convince your enemies that you are ready to use them is suicide.”
A failure to have an effective nuclear deterrent policy “would plunge the world into a series of wars that would inevitably turn nuclear and end up with the World War III,” Karaganov believes, adding that this could happen “within the span of several years.”
“The main goal of a doctrine should be in convincing all current and future enemies that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons.”
His words came amid the continued Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region and Kiev’s attempts to receive permission for the use of Western long-range missiles to strike deep inside the country.
“It’s high time we stated that any massive strikes against our territory give us a right to respond with a nuclear strike,” Karaganov insists. He also called on Moscow to clearly define the “nuclear escalation” steps in the next doctrine to leave Russia’s adversaries no room for doubt about whether it is ready to use its nuclear arsenal and when.
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly demonstrated a more reserved position on the issue. Talking to Karaganov at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June, the president said that Russia was “not brandishing” nuclear weapons and expressed hope that “it will never come” to a nuclear exchange between Moscow and the West.
Moscow “has no reasons to even think about” using nuclear weapons, he said at the time, calling on Russian officials to not even “touch upon” the subject of nuclear weapons unless absolutely necessary.
Later in June, Putin also said that Russia did not “need a preventive strike yet, because the enemy is guaranteed to be destroyed in a retaliatory strike.” He did not rule out changes to the doctrine, though.