Russia will make changes to its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons in response to what it regards as Western escalation in the war in Ukraine, state media quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Sunday.
The existing nuclear doctrine, set out in a decree by President Vladimir Putin in 2020, says Russia may use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.
Some hawks among Russia’s military analysts have urged Putin to lower the threshold for nuclear use in order to “sober up” Russia’s enemies in the West.
Hey look, it’s the Russian State media. I love this picture
The SECOND Russia uses nukes, it’s OVER. Russia’s entire existence ceases to exist, as EVERY country will nuke Russia. It won’t be WWIII.
WWIII would imply two set of countries of roughly equal might, and each side has several countries fighting together.
This would be more like EVERYBODY vs Russia. And they wouldn’t last more than a few days.
The problem is Russia has the very real capability of really screwing up a good chunk of the world before they get wiped off the map. It’s kind of scary if im being honest.
I would have believed you a few years ago.
At this point I think Putin has to have serious doubts that he could use a nuke and have it actually work. He’s up against both western tech and his own corruption.
Yeah the problem is he only needs one to work. Even if it’s a dud Russia being nuked into oblivion will have long term ramifications for the entire globe
We don’t have to Nuke Moscow, to effectively nuke Moscow. We invented the MOAB just to be able to do that. They have to rely on the dirty version.
Yeah but it might humble the rest of the world a bit. No one will want to be next.
Do they really?
They made a lot of claims about their military capabilities. However their war with Ukraine has shown those to largely be lies propped up to hide that their oligarchs have emezzled the money.
I’m starting to wonder how nuclear capable they actually are these days.
Of all the things Russia has spent money on, I have no doubts they have kept most of their nuclear arsenal in working condition. Even if they spent $0 on their military they would find a way to keep the nukes in working order.
Nukes and ICBMs are extremely complex devices. They also require extremely specialist servi e work to remain functional. Even worse, the only people who can actually check that work are the ones doing it.
Russia hasn’t detonated a nuke in decades. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of their arsenal are now duds. The money embezzled, while boxes were ticked. Similarly, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of their ICBMs just wouldn’t launch.
Russia’s nuclear capabilities are likely a paper tiger, and Putin likely knows this. Until they try and use them, they are scary. If they try and they fail, they are in a VERY bad situation.
Putin is many things, but he’s not stupid. It would take a LOT more pressure from nato for him to even consider using nukes.
It’s kind of funny to me that a significant reason Russia is in its current predicament is because of rampant corruption. Putin runs the country like a Mafia state and then gets all surprised Pikachu Face when it becomes apparent that his underlings just stole all the money instead of using it to maintain their weapons stockpile, which is now aging and dilapidated.
Yeah, he knows we’re doubting his capacity and isn’t doing underground detonations
Uhh, maybe 2 decades ago, they sold all those weapons on Wish.com, where do you think all those super-yachts came from?
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I think even China and India would sever any remaining ties to russia if russia uses a nuke.
They would, as Russia is only a useful idiot and a link to natural resources for both of those countries.
China would just wait until it’s over and then pick through the remains of Russia. Probably try to claim a big chunk of southern Russia using some excuse or another.
Well it’s not
southern Russia’snorthern China’s fault that some mad man in Moscow used a nuke. China will just be generous and help lead the clean up in wonderful north north China.Ehh. They’d make a beeline for every natural resource bearing region inside Russia’s borders. The whole south-western Russian region will turn into a clusterfuck free for all that I doubt they’d want to get involved with, but any mining and oil/gas centers east of the Urals will be priority one.
Empty land is not terribly useful for China right now, although large portions of siberia will likely become arable in the next 50 years. but the dragon is always hungry.
China would be dealing with nuclear radiation fallout across much of its country.
Unless they are dropping ground detonations there wouldn’t me much. Most nuclear detonation would be airbursts because it’s more destructive than a ground blast. Ground blasts cause major fallout.
If Russia uses their nukes, about 30 minuites later there won’t be a Russia left to sever ties with.
Nato will write a sternly worded letter. Biden will SLAM putin for it. The EU will try to pass chat control.
I don’t think that everyone is ready to cry right after reading this comment. Pls delete
Ironically Biden was the one who knew Russia would attack Ukraine and spent MONTHS preparing Ukraine for it, which is why it wasn’t over in 3 days. We have also prepped for nuclear escalation. This is what real leaders do. Trump would just continue to give Putin a blow job.
it would be over for everyone
Ehh, I’ve had a good life.
I better start eating people now so I can be a good cannibal in the wastelands
Beware of microplastics.
Way ahead of you
We don’t need to nuke them even, we can just use conventional munitions to fuck up every military installation they have to rubble.
And chuck a few Tomahawks at Kremlin to be sure
Unless the nuclear fallout is proven to effect a NATO ally and trigger Article 5, no one would give a shit if Russia nuked itself on its own territory. And no one other than the US can afford to unleash all of their their nuclear arsenal, costing billions of dollars and their only defense deterrence, in one go to light the powder keg and be left without nukes to defend themselves.
However, you are correct, Russia would cease to exist if they retaliated disproportionately and a single molecule of NATO territory was effected as a result.
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OK, I genuinely have no clue what got that post removed. If you’re gonna have your own magic dictionary of what’s allowed then you’re gonna need to let people know what are and are not the special “no-no” words. It wasn’t even an edgy comment, it was just calling out the Russian bullshit, or was that the issue? Gotta protect the Russian shills or something?
if Russia nuked itself on its own territory.
The fact that it’s Russia substantially increases this possibility.
This would be more like EVERYBODY vs Russia.
I do not share your confidence about that.
Countries with nuclear weapons include China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and possibly Iran. And while I don’t think any of them want a nuclear war, if a nuclear war breaks out, I can imagine three or four of them siding with Russia.
China might side with Russia simply because they’re sick of the US trying to hem them in militarily through the “island chain” strategy. The US has the entire coast of China surrounded by military bases, which could be used to cut off China’s trade routes, which is an existential threat to China because their economy is so dependent on exports.
North Korea has a historical beef with the US, and Russia helped North Korea survive through a period when the US tried to starve them.
India and Pakistan have a long-running dispute over Kashmir, and if India backs the US, it’s possibly Pakistan will back Russia just to oppose India.
And Russia and Iran have been solid military and economic allies for a while now, working together in recent conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
If their intelligence agencies are worth anything, they would understand that any action unless directly against Russia would be suicide not only for them but also us. Nukes are a losing strategy no matter what.
Nuclear politics trump geopolitics.
The US has the entire coast of China surrounded by military bases, which could be used to cut of China’s trade routes, which is an existential threat to China because their economy is so dependent on exports.
What is it with you people?!?!
“it’s not fair that the US DARES to talk to other countries anywhere near us!?!?”
This is the exact same excuse putin used for invading Ukraine, because no country is allowed to make their own decisions on who they talk to unless Russia and China get a veto.
We have power they cannot begin to comprehend, they need to learn a lesson from Putin, “Don’t start nothin, won’t be nothin”, because if there’s one thing the US is famous for, it’s ending wars definitively.
“it’s not fair that the US DARES to talk to other countries anywhere near us!?!?”
I don’t believe that’s what I said.
Dog continues to bark.
The sound of rusty sabres being rattled.
They had to do something with all of those rusty Soviet AKs
Source is relevant.
You mean the Russian foreign minister?
The pug.
Sergei isn’t one of mine; he is a Chihuahua, and, may the Master and the Holy Bone forgive me for saying the word, probably part P*meranian too.
Oh right, I see now I got whooshed.
Putin, you can’t invade another country killing thousands of their civilians and then get upset when that country comes into yours and starts taking your territory. Using a nuke here doesn’t make you look strong, it makes you look extremely weak.
Tankies: is this western imperialism?
No they won’t. If Putin isn’t a complete idiot, he knows that using nukes will be the end of Russia.
It’s worse than that. Russia knows they can never use nukes preemptively, it’s why they have their policy.
Russia is one of the most centralized countries in the world, everything revolves around Moscow, all political and economic power, all administration, without Moscow they know Russia is dead.
The whole point of a nuke is that it eats cities, their paranoia that Moscow would be hit during the cold War was extreme, they put incredible amounts of money into air and missile defenses and demanded carve outs to the abm treaties specifically for Moscow.
Because Russia isn’t a country, it’s an empire ruled from Moscow, and it Moscow was destroyed it would instantly cease to be a country.
Basically, if things reached a point where Moscow’s control over the rest of Russia was at risk, that’s when you’d see them start to negotiate.
Putin also has grandkids. I am guessing he doesn’t want them to die.
It’s a bit more nuanced than that. Russia would immediately be at war with every other nuclear state, but there wouldn’t necessarily be retaliatory nuclear strikes unless Russia began firing missiles at nuclear states too. The video I linked is a from a Danish professor who describes really well the dynamics of misusing nuclear weapons.
… if he isn’t a complete idiot…
Hmm… Lol.
On a serious note, a lot of people here seem to forget that any nuclear weapon hurts the entire planet and all of us in it. It is weird to see people who supposedly care about injustices suddenly go 100% in on devastating the ecosystem and mass murdering inocents (since you know, nuclear bombs are traditionally not used on military targets).
lol indeed 🥲 Very much a war of Russian stupidity.
Well the American fascists used nukes in Japan, that entitles other nations to use nukes if they want
/s?
Nukes are such a terrifying weapon that after being used, the world collectively shit its pants and said “maybe we’ve gone too far”. Truman fired a general who suggested using nukes in the Korean War, and everyday military personnel stopped a misunderstanding from causing a nuclear exchange in the Cold War.
Country X doing a shitty thing did not entitle countries A-Z to also do that shitty thing. If it was terrible of X to do it, it’s terrible when anyone else does it, and they don’t get a pass just because of how shitty X was.
Edit: Oh my god you’re serious. What the fuck.
Bark bark bark
In Putin’s eyes:
Putin = Russia.
So, “threatens the existence of the state” means “I might personally lose power over this”.
It wasn’t that long ago troops marched towards Putin, and while he meant to teach the lesson “go against me and die” what he really taught everyone was “next time don’t negotiate and don’t believe anything I say”.
All it takes is letting some fall guy with a personal grudge against Putin get close to him with a gun.
Everyone gets to pretend that they didn’t want him dead, and the fall guy gets killed immediately after but got to settle his score first.
Without Putin the focus goes back on making money, and Russia stops invading people and threatening nuclear Armageddon.
The people around him are definitely considering if he’s worth more as a myth than a man at this point.
Putin has no endgame.
There is no timeline where he can step down and live peacefully.
His one in a million is to conquer enough of Ukraine and somehow be allowed to keep it - but that’s not happening unless Donald wins the election.
Even if crooked Don wins the election, Ukraine now has a nice Kursk that will need to be traded back.
The more Ukraine grabs now, the less Russia is able to claim if crooked Don gets back in.
True. Dictators like Putin don’t usually retire, alive at least and the end is not usually pretty, so he hangs on, and on.
And we can assume that these nukes, unlike the conventional armory, have been maintained since the Cold War and not sold off to private interests?
I seem to recall a big kerfuffle around a decade and a half back about Russia not actually knowing what became of a whole bunch of nuclear weapons in the aftermath of the USSR collapsing. There were also rumors of Soviet nukes being sold off to various unsavory groups. It really wouldn’t surprise me to find out there was some truth to that.
I have also heard that ICBMs and the like require regular expensive and specialized maintenance in order to remain functional. Knowing what we now know about Russia what do you figure the odds are that some general or other decided those maintenance funds would be better used to line their pockets since the odds of actually using those nukes were so low?
Almost all nuclear weapons require quite a bit of expertise to maintain over time. If they got sold off 30 years ago, chances are 99% that they’re mostly good for lighting off as a dirty bomb and not much else at this point.
I have no doubt large parts of their nuclear arsenal have been stripped to fund their maintainers’ Krokodil habits but it only takes one to start a nuclear war, and a smaller and simpler tactical warhead on a Khinzal or Kh-15 of the sort we’d likely see used against Ukraine is less likely to have been scavenged.
They couldn’t even keep track of the reactors from the nuclear powered lighthouses in Siberia.
Russia: We’re updating the conditions required for the West to glass us when we get too big for our britches
What the fuck Russia?? How hard are you planning on rattling that sabre?
MAD is like 2 men standing in a lake of gasoline, one man has 3 matches, the other has 5, both threaten to use their matches if the other uses his.
Russia is saying they’ll use their matches if the other guy throws a rock at him. The fucking situation is stupid and I hope that my ashes get blasted to a different planet when the bombs go off. I don’t want to even be a part of this stupid planets carbon cycle anymore.
Russia: nuclear terrorism is all we have left.
Millennials: don’t threaten us with a good time.
Zoomers: Maybe we’ll finally get to eat some rich people for real.
Alphas: Skibidi (Eh, they’re still young)
Edit:
Boomers: The Earth’s climate has always had mushroom clouds.
Silent: Isn’t that something? Anyway, this relative you’ve never heard of had a baby, and it’s bingo night…
The last 3 Greatest: Goddamn it, we were so close. Back to my youth, I guess.
Don’t know where to go with Gen-X. Do they really exist? /s
As a millennial I have great wisdom to give the youth of today: Go play pokemon and have fun with your friend before it’s too late
I wonder if there’s Skibidi Toilet trading cards. Probably.
My gen Z ass has premature grey hairs now, so I’m not in the picture.
Why do these guys allways look like their family is being held hostage or something?
They’re not being actively held hostage in that there’s no giant prison with all their families in it.
They are being held hostage because of the implication. The whereabouts of their family is well known so are they going to toe the line? Of course, because of the implication.
lol. russia goes on drunken invasion spree of their neighbors and feel they have to sober up their neighbors.
I guess they’re relaxing the policy, since they’ve hinted previously that they viewed attacks on Russian territory to be a threat to the existence of Russia and would use nukes in response. But they didn’t.
If their nuclear bombers went airborne the second Ukraine troops crossed their borders people would’ve taken them seriously. It would’ve shown how serious they were. But here we are, weeks after the invasion onto Russian soil, and their strong man argument is changing a few words on paper. It’s not very impressive or convincing.
