nuclear-news

Putin Powerfully Rebuffed The Hawks Who Want Him To Attack NATO

Andrew Korybko, Jun 10, 2026, https://korybko.substack.com/p/putin-powerfully-rebuffed-the-hawks

In his words, talk about Russia attacking NATO “is not simply nonsense; it is a provocation.”

Several top “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” (NRPR) influencers rang the alarm last month about Russia’s alleged plans to attack NATO, which were inspired by top hawk Sergey Karaganov and then Russian Ambassador to the OSCE Dmitry Polyanskiy ominously channeling his rhetoric. Readers can review examples of their warnings here, here, here, here, and here. Casual NRPRs therefore braced themselves for what would have in that scenario almost certainly been the start of World War III had it come to pass.

It obviously hasn’t and it likely won’t ever, however, judging by Putin’s response when he was recently asked about these alleged plans during a meeting with foreign journalists. In his words, “Why would Russia attack Europe or go to war with NATO? What would be the purpose? As I have said before, these claims are not merely nonsense. In my view, they are a deliberate provocation designed to create the impression of a threat that does not actually exist.”

Putin then elaborated that “The objective is to persuade their populations to increase defence spending and, as a first step, to pay for the regime that seized power in Kiev. That, I believe, is the real explanation. It is not simply nonsense; it is a provocation. What surprises me, however, is that some people in European countries appear to believe it. I find that astonishing. The whole notion is simply absurd. It would be amusing if it were not so sad.”

It’s not just “some people in European countries” who “appear to believe it”, but his own top hawk is championing this policy and it was recently amplified to the max by top NRPR influencers, many of whom can be described as “state-adjacent” due to being platformed by publicly financed media, attending government-organized conferences, and/or taking state-secured tours of Donbass. Casual NRPRs are therefore left to wonder whether Putin is telling the truth or is “psyching out the West”.

It’s always best to defer to what Putin himself says in such cases whenever confusion arises, which is due to top NRPR influencers practicing what’s been called “Potemkinism”, or the creation of “alternative realities” about Russian interests and policy for “strategic purposes” (whatever they might be). The most infamous example is that Putin is an anti-Zionist secretly allied with Iran against Israel despite him being a proud lifelong philo-Semite as proven by his many quotes to this end from the official Kremlin website.

Accordingly, while it would be inaccurate describe the fiercely loyal Karaganov as a “provocateur” in the spirit of how Putin condemned such folks who advocate for Russia to attack NATO, he nevertheless powerfully rebuffed hawks such as him as well as the top NRPR influencers who hyped up his rhetoric. That said, Russia’s foreign spy service did indeed warn last month that their country might carry out retaliatory strikes against Latvia if Ukraine launches drones from there, which should be taken seriously.

That’s altogether different than what Karaganov has been pushing for, namely a first strike against NATO that could easily spiral into World War III, and it’s important for casual NRPRs to understand this. As Putin himself phrased it, such talk “is not simply nonsense; it is a provocation.” When those on Russia’s side do it, no matter what their intentions might be, they inadvertently “persuade [Westerners] to increase defence spending and, as a first step, to pay for the regime that seized power in Kiev.”

June 16, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Karaganov Fallacy – Nuclear strike against Europe IS NOT the right answer for Russia

Karaganov advocates preemptive Russian nuclear strikes against a Europe he deems bellicose, banking on American passivity. Scott Ritter believes conventional missiles, not nukes, are the only credible path.

warlike ruminations by some of NATO’s leading military minds do not exist in a vacuum but rather are reflective of a general posture of war preparation being promoted by the NATO alliance itself. Just ask Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General, who recently warned that NATO was in a race against time when it came to preparing for an inevitable war with Russia.

the true lesson is that nuclear wars cannot be won, should never be fought, and as such nuclear weapons should be done away altogether to avoid falling into intellectual traps such as the one offered by Karaganov, where their use is deemed possible.

Mon 01 Jun 2026, Scott Ritter, https://forumgeopolitica.com/article/the-karaganov-fallacy

Editor’s Note : After publishing our article “Is 1914 repeating itself? Will war between Europe and Russia finally break out openly?” where we discussed – among others – the nuclear doctrine of the Russian Federeation and also the Karaganov doctrin, Dmitry Orlov published the article «How to survive a Russian tactical nuclear strike». In today’s article Scott Ritter analyses the Karaganov doctrine and argues that nuclear weapons are not the right tools for Russia.

Back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the Wallstreet brokerage firm, E.F. Hutton, came up with one of the most iconic television ad campaigns in history, built around the catch phrase “When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen.”

Sergei Karaganov is the Russian analog to E.F. Hutton—when Karaganov speaks, people listen. The 73-year old political scientist, who currently heads the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy and serves as the dean of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, has advised both post-Soviet era Russian Presidents, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, and his opinion continues to carry weight among the senior-most decision making circles of the Russian government.

Karaganov has, for the past several years, been warning about the growing threat to Russia from NATO, and in particular the European nations of NATO who have constructed a world view which postulates Russia as an existential threat which must be decisively confronted and defeated.

In this Karaganov is not wrong.

The language of the Europeans is self-indicting.

According to a newly published German military strategy, Russia represents “the greatest and most immediate threat for the foreseeable future” to Germany and transatlantic security. The classified strategy concludes by declaring “Russia is laying the groundwork for a military attack on NATO member states.”

Germany’s chief of defense, General Carsten Breuer furthered this argument in a 2025 statement to the media where he noted that “There’s an intent and there’s a buildup of the stocks” by Russia for a possible future attack on Nato’s Baltic state members.

Brueuer and Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorious, are using the threat from Russia as an excuse for the rearmament of Germany, with the goal of making the German army the most powerful in Europe by 2029.

Why that date?

According to General Breuer, this is when Russia will attack Europe. “This is what the analysts are assessing,” Breuer said, “in 2029. So we have to be ready by 2029.”

The German analysis is nearly identical to that of their British allies. Former Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, who retired in the summer of 2025, has warned that a war with Putin was a “realistic possibility” by 2030. “If Russia stops fighting in Ukraine,” Sanders told the British media, “you get to a position where within a matter of months they will have the capability to conduct a limited attack on a NATO member that we will be responsible for supporting, and that happens by 2030.”

These warlike ruminations by some of NATO’s leading military minds do not exist in a vacuum but rather are reflective of a general posture of war preparation being promoted by the NATO alliance itself. Just ask Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General, who recently warned that NATO was in a race against time when it came to preparing for an inevitable war with Russia. “We are Russia’s next target,” Rutte said. “I fear that too many are quietly complacent. Too many don’t feel the urgency. And too many believe that time is on our side. It is not. The time for action is now. Conflict is at our door. Russia has brought war back to Europe. And we must be prepared. Russia has brought war back to Europe. We must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured.”

The rhetoric of Breuer, Sanders and Rutte lends itself to an argument where the nations of NATO are responding to Russian aggression. But one must not be fooled into believing that aggression is a one-way street. Enter, stage left, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys, who recently opined that “We [NATO] must show the Russians that we can break through the small fortress they have built in Kaliningrad. NATO has the means to flatten Russian air defense bases and missile systems if necessary.”

Budrys’ lunacy, which even if successful would amount to little more than the collective suicide of NATO, didn’t appear from a vacuum, but rather echoed similar sentiment expressed by General Chris Donahue of the US Army, who serves as the commander of US forces in Europe. Donahue bragged that Kaliningrad, Russia, is approximately 47 miles wide and surrounded by NATO on all sides. He claimed that NATO and the US Army now have the capability to “take that down from the ground in a timeframe that is unheard of and faster than we’ve ever been able to do.” Donahue went on: “We’ve already planned that and we’ve already developed it.”

In many ways, Donahue’s bluster is far more embarrassing that the pugilistic nonsense espoused by his NATO colleagues, if for no other reason than he more than anyone should know both the extreme limitations of US and NATO power (something demonstrated very publicly with the recent US failed aggression against Iran) and the consequences of any NATO attack on Kaliningrad, which would be immediately fatal to Donahue, his staff, and the entire leadership of NATO, given the inevitability and severity of the anticipated Russian retaliation.

And therein lies the rub. NATO’s jingoistic rhetoric aside, there is no conventional military power in Europe, whether singularly or collectively, which poses an existential threat to Russia. Recent NATO military exercises demonstrated just how inexperienced NATO ground forces were in modern combat operations incorporating drone warfare on any appreciative scale. Imagine for a moment a NATO Brigade running into a Rubicon detachment on the battlefield. The results would be as one-sided as they would be fatal to the defeated party, which would in every scenario imaginable be the NATO forces.

The words of Breuer, Sanders, Rutte, Budrys, and Donahue amplify one universal constant when it comes to NATO today: militarily it is very much a paper tiger, incapable of sustained intensive ground combat at any appreciable level. The warlike verbiage spouted by these mouthpieces of mayhem is simply a desperate plea for relevancy in an effort to mobilize public support for a militarization campaign requiring energizing both populations and industry in a way hitherto fore unimaginable in post-Cold War Europe, and for all sense and purposes impossible to achieve today.

As the fictional Commander, Air Group (CAG) told Tom Cruise’s Maverick in the first Top Gun movie, “Son, your mouth is writing checks your body can’t cash.”

Welcome to the NATO collective today.

While Sergei Karaganov and his fellow Russian hardliners are more than justified in taking extreme umbrage at the warlike posturing Europe is assuming today in opposition to Russia, the reality is Europe poses absolutely no threat whatsoever to Russia as things currently stand, and the probability of Europe overcoming the sizeable political and economic hurdles required to build a military force capable of surviving on a Russian battlefield, let alone prevailing, is slim to none.

More worrisome, however, is the nuclear posturing being done by certain NATO countries to compensate for the alliance’s extreme shortcomings regarding conventional military power projection. This nuclear flexing has taken on an even greater urgency now that President Trump’s hostile ambivalence toward NATO and European security throws into question America’s commitment to fulfilling any hypothetical Article 5 scenario—a stance which simultaneously throws into question the reliability of America’s nuclear umbrella. France and the United Kingdom are working to create a joint nuclear doctrine to offset the loss of America’s nuclear arsenal, and both nations are in active discussions with other NATO members to extend their respective nuclear umbrellas over the Arctic, the Baltics, Poland and Germany.

Sergei Karaganov famously postulated that no American President would be willing to trade Boston for Poznan, meaning that if Russia were to hypothetically attack this unfortunate Polish urban center with a nuclear weapon, the United States would not respond in kind.

This, of course, is the kind of hypothesis that should never be tested and, given the fact that Russia faces no threat of an existential nature from the European collective, has zero justification for even being contemplated being tested.

Russia, together with the other major nuclear weapons states (the US, China, UK and France) co-signed a joint statement in early 2022 which affirmed that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.  The statement went on to declare that “As nuclear use would have far-reaching consequences, we also affirm that nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war.”

Russia has not officially renounced that joint declaration, which on the surface would indicate that the Karaganov initiative to preemptively use nuclear weapons against Europe has zero viability when it comes to reflecting official Russian policy.

There is, of course, one major problem—Karaganov was instrumental in crafting the 2025 nuclear posture for the Russian Federation, which in part declared that nuclear weapons could come into play in situations where conventional forces are insufficient to deter an opponent or achieve a military objective. So far, the SMO in and of itself does not meet the criteria for preemptive nuclear weapons usage. Whether a large-scale conventional war with NATO would cross this threshold is a separate matter.

But the situation Russia faces today, which Karaganov addresses, involves a nuclear armed power aiding a non-nuclear armed state to launch conventional attacks on Russia that could pose an existential threat. This is, of course, the very definition of what the ongoing proxy conflict between Russia and the collective West over Ukraine is, especially when it comes to the ongoing NATO-backed campaign of drone strikes against strategic Russian targets.

It’s not just Karaganov who is crying foul. Dmitri Polyansky, the Russian Ambassador to the OSCE, noting that the ongoing Ukrainian drone strikes against Russia are only possible with Western military expertise, technology, and intelligence, recently declared that it might already be “too late” to avert a Russian retaliatory strike against European targets directly affiliated with the facilitation of Ukrainian long-range drone strikes against Russia.

But even in this circumstance, nuclear weapons are not necessarily called for, something even Karaganov acknowledges. Conventional missile strikes, using weapons such as the Oreshnik intermediate-range missile, should be mounted against select European targets. But Karaganov then goes further, advocating for the use of nuclear strikes if the conventional missiles don’t “deter Europe.” Here, Karaganov puts value on the need to instill “primal fear” in Europe not by the threat of nuclear weapons, which clearly hasn’t worked, but through their actual use.

In this instance, Karaganov is dead wrong.

The use of nuclear weapons obviates the strategic advantages Russia has accrued by building the World’s largest, most combat capable (and tested) military. It nullifies the escalatory dominance Russia has achieved by deploying the Oreshnik conventional strike system. But worst of all it erases the very doctrinal paradigm that has prevented the world from stumbling down the path of nuclear oblivion—the idea that nuclear wars cannot be won and therefore must never be fought.

The Karaganov doctrine, so to speak, introduced a new paradigm—nuclear wars can, in fact be won, and as such should be fought.

Karaganov proves his thesis by postulating an unproven hypothesis—the US won’t trade Boston for Poznan.

He avoids the uncomfortable question as to whether France or the United Kingdom, singularly or together, would opt to put forward a nuclear response by declaring that Russia would eliminate both these nations and all of Europe if they were to try.

But this begs the question whether a Russian leader would be willing to trade Saint Petersburg or Moscow for London, Berlin and Paris.

Does Karaganov really want to test this hypothesis?

But let’s postulate, just for the sake of argument, that Karaganov’s thesis holds, and that Europe is collectively cowed by a Russian preemptive nuclear strike on Poznan, and the US opts out of sacrificing Boston and doesn’t retaliate.

Then what?

Nuclear war has, to date, been averted by the notion that there can be no winners.

Karaganov’s doctrine flips the script, and declares that there can, in fact, be winners.

But what exactly has been “won”? Decades of deterrence theory will have been washed away, leaving in its stead a massive strategic imbalance that cannot stand. There can be no nuclear deterrence if one side is willing to use nuclear weapons and the other side isn’t. Yes, the United States may likely forego sacrificing Boston or any other American city for a European urban victim of Russian nuclear annihilation. But the United States will need to immediately equalize the nuclear deterrence equation by demonstrating that it, too, can use nuclear weapons, and thus test the hypothesis of whether Russia would be willing to sacrifice Kazan for Tehran.

The answer is likely to be no.

Crisis averted.

Or not.

No longer is the world one where nuclear war cannot be fought, but rather one where nuclear war has become an accepted practice. War gaming and basic game theory hold that once nuclear weapons are used, it is simply a matter of time before matters escalate toward a full nuclear exchange, terminating all life on the planet. This isn’t idle speculation. In 1983 the Pentagon conducted a war game called Proud Prophet, an unscripted event involving the highest levels of the US military and its global warfighting commands, using real-world communication channels, doctrines and secret war plans. The game allowed for the consideration of limited small-scale nuclear strikes, but always ended the same way—global nuclear Armageddon.

Karaganov doesn’t address this issue, with good cause—because no leader, Russian or American, would start a nuclear war in a situation that fell short of manifesting a threat to their respective existential survival, if they knew that no matter what, the result was always the same—everyone dies.

Karaganov has done the world a great service in forcefully postulating the possibility of a winnable limited nuclear war.

Not just because it allows the world to once again embrace the foundational notion that nuclear wars cannot be won, and as such should never be fought.

No, the true lesson is that nuclear wars cannot be won, should never be fought, and as such nuclear weapons should be done away altogether to avoid falling into intellectual traps such as the one offered by Karaganov, where their use is deemed possible.

There is no greater justification for nuclear arms control and disarmament than the scenarios put forward by Karaganov.

And in the present time, when nuclear arms control has been removed from the global diplomatic playbook, the world needs the kind of kick in the seat of the pants that any reasoned reflection on the fallacy of Sergei Karaganov’s nuclear theories brings—without nuclear arms control, our collective demise at the hands of the weapons we refuse to eliminate is all but assured.

June 5, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russian nuclear weapons, 2026

Bulletin, By Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight-Boyle | May 14, 2026

Russia is in the late stages of a multi-decade-long modernization program to replace all of its Soviet-era nuclear-capable systems with newer versions. However, this program is facing significant challenges that will further delay the entry into force of these newer systems. In this issue of the Nuclear Notebook, we estimate that Russia now possesses approximately 4,400 nuclear warheads for its strategic and non-strategic nuclear forces—a slight increase from the previous year. The significant increase in non-strategic nuclear weapons that the Pentagon predicted five years ago has so far not materialized. A nuclear weapons storage site in Belarus appears to be nearing completion. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: director Hans M. Kristensen, associate director Matt Korda, and senior research associates Eliana Johns and Mackenzie Knight-Boyle

This article is freely available in PDF format in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ digital magazine (published by Taylor & Francis) at this link.

Russia is nearing the completion of a decades-long effort to replace most of its strategic and non-strategic nuclear-capable systems with newer versions. But despite Moscow’s continued rhetorical emphasis on its nuclear forces, commercial satellite imagery and other open sources indicate that elements of Russia’s nuclear modernization are proceeding much more slowly than planned: Upgrades to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and bombers face significant delays, and the “significant” increase of Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons that US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) predicted five years ago has so far not materialized (Richard 2020, 5).

As of March 2026, we estimate that Russia has a stockpile of approximately 4,400 nuclear warheads assigned for use by long-range strategic launchers and shorter-range tactical nuclear forces. This number is greater than last year, largely due to a change in our estimate of warheads assigned to non-strategic nuclear forces following STRATCOM’s publication of its estimate for the number of warheads in the Russian arsenal. The estimate, which is the first time in more than three decades that the US government has disclosed how many warheads it believes Russia possesses, stated that “Russia’s nuclear warhead arsenal consists of approximately 4,600 nuclear warheads; 2,600 are intended for its strategic triad and up to 2,000 are warheads intended for theater nuclear weapons” (Correll 2026). Given that the US Intelligence Community for several years has estimated Russia has 1,000–2,000 nonstrategic warheads (US Department of State 2025a), the “approximately” in the STRATCOM statement indicates the stockpile is less than 4,600 and the number of nonstrategic warheads is less than 2,000. We were able to match the estimate for strategic warheads, but the total stockpile number

necessitated a revision of our estimate for nonstrategic warheads closer to the estimate we published in 2023 (Kristensen, Korda, and Reynolds 2023).

Of the estimated 4,400 stockpiled warheads, approximately 1,796 strategic warheads are deployed: about 892 on land-based ballistic missiles, about 704 on submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and about 200 at heavy bomber bases. Another approximately 810 strategic warheads are in storage, along with about 1,794 nonstrategic warheads. In addition to the military stockpile for operational forces, a large number—approximately 1,020—of retired but still largely intact warheads await dismantlement, for a total inventory of approximately 5,420 warheads^[1] (see Table 1 on original).

Russia’s nuclear modernization program appears motivated in part by the Kremlin’s strong desire to maintain quantitative and qualitative parity with the United States and to maintain national prestige. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://thebulletin.org/premium/2026-05/russian-nuclear-weapons-2026/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=The%20Russian%20nuclear%20arsenal%20today&utm_campaign=20260518%20Monday%20Newsletter

May 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How Russia signals nuclear resolve with civilian nuclear energy infrastructure.

Iran today: a different geopolitical climate for nuclear energy. In the most recent war in Iran, Russia has so far refrained from making explicit nuclear threats, but the United States and Israel may have adopted a similar ad hoc approach that substitutes threats on civilian nuclear energy infrastructure for traditional nuclear threats.

Trump’s threats suggest that the United States has begun blurring the lines between conventional energy infrastructure, nuclear energy infrastructure, and nuclear weapons.

Bulletin, By Elena Tiedens | Voices of Tomorrow | May 14, 2026

The Russian state-run nuclear energy company Rosatom evacuated hundreds of workers from the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran in late March. The Rosatom employees who remain are responsible for ensuring the safe operation of a nuclear power plant in a war zone—but may also serve the dual purpose of re-affirming Russia’s interests in the region. Long treated as the peaceful counterpart of nuclear weapons, civil nuclear power plants now play a role as a nuclear signaling option in wartime. (Nuclear signaling can be thought of as a non-explicit reminder, at a step below a direct threat, that is meant to call an adversary’s attention to the risk posed by one’s possession of nuclear weapons—though experts disagree on terminology and definitions.)

Russia began its pattern of power plant-based nuclear signaling at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. There, Russia has deterred Ukrainian forces from retaking the plant by threatening nuclear destruction, potentially leading to nuclear weapons use, should Ukraine and its allies attack Zaporizhzhia. In recent months, Russia has made similar statements about the potential for nuclear catastrophe at the Bushehr plant, as a deterrent to further US strikes.

Although this type of nuclear signaling is likely not a fully developed aspect of state nuclear strategy, Russia has increasingly relied on nuclear power plants as an ad hoc line of defense during wartime. Given Rosatom’s global footprint—Rosatom’s civil nuclear energy projects are expanding across the world, with at least 41 civil nuclear energy projects planned in 11 countries ranging from Bangladesh to Hungary—states must reconsider their nuclear energy contracts with the nationalized energy company. And because there are indications that the United States and Israel may be following Russia’s lead in their recent

strikes on Bushehr, the global community must redefine and condemn signaling with nuclear power plants as a new nuclear threat.

Nuclear signaling at Zaporizhzhia. The Russian occupation of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant—the largest nuclear power plant in Europe—was a watershed moment in nuclear history: the first military occupation of a civilian nuclear power plant. Russia first invaded the Zaporizhzhia power plant in March 2022, and after Rosatom’s efforts to redirect the plant’s electricity from the Ukrainian to Russian energy grids failed, the Russian military repurposed the plant as a military base from which to launch further operations in Eastern Ukraine.

Russia warned that attempts to retake the plant could trigger a nuclear disaster, followed by potential Russian nuclear weapons use. In September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was not afraid to use nuclear weapons to protect Russian territory, including the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant. These statements served as a nuclear deterrent without the deployment of a single warhead—and consequently were less risky for Russia. Although Russia’s occupation of the plant constitutes a serious nuclear, environmental, and humanitarian risk, Russia has attempted to reverse the narrative to signal that a Ukrainian effort to retake the nuclear power plant would be an unjustifiable nuclear risk.

In Ukraine, Russia’s occupation of Zaporizhzhia has become an essential aspect of its nuclear posture, which treats a potential Ukrainian defense of the plant as a nuclear redline. Although Russia has faced international condemnation for its activities in Zaporizhzhia, Russia may view statements about the reactor as less risky and escalatory than those involving weapons capabilities.

Nuclear signaling in the Twelve-Day War. During the Twelve-Day War between Iran and Israel in June 2025, Russia proved itself willing to use similar rhetoric about the potential for civil nuclear disaster. After the United States got involved toward the end of the war and bombed Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow, Russia sought to deter further attacks—but without providing political support or military hardware that would detract from its objectives in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Maria Zakharova warned that any US strike on the Bushehr plant “would be an extremely dangerous step with truly unpredictable negative consequences.”

Putin went a step further. When asked how Russia was supporting Iran, Putin implied that continued operation of the Bushehr reactor during the June 2025 war was Russia’s primary means of support for Iran. “Isn’t that support? Iran has not asked us for any other support,” Putin said.

Russia’s approaches in Ukraine and in the Twelve-Day War are not identical, but they both demonstrate a willingness to weaponize civilian nuclear infrastructure through deterring attacks and in service of its strategic objectives.

Iran today: a different geopolitical climate for nuclear energy. In the most recent war in Iran, Russia has so far refrained from making explicit nuclear threats, but the United States and Israel may have adopted a similar ad hoc approach that substitutes threats on civilian nuclear energy infrastructure for traditional nuclear threats. Since mid-March, the United States and Israel have launched four separate strikes that have reportedly hit within the perimeter of the Bushehr nuclear complex. Although the United States and Israel have not claimed responsibility for the strikes—and the projectiles have not hit the reactor or resulted in radiation leaks—the possible targeting of a nuclear power plant is an alarming escalation.

This risk is particularly acute in light of US President Donald Trump’s March 21, 2026, threat to “obliterate their [Iran’s] power plants, starting with the biggest one first.” Some experts have speculated that Trump intended to threaten a strike on Bushehr, which is not Iran’s largest power plant but is the country’s largest nuclear plant. While attacks on civilian energy infrastructure are generally illegal under the Geneva Conventions, a strike on Bushehr would also constitute a risky weaponization with serious nuclear escalation risks beyond those associated with non-nuclear civilian energy infrastructure. Although less thoroughly articulated than Russian threats involving Zaporizhzhia, Trump’s threats suggest that the United States has begun blurring the lines between conventional energy infrastructure, nuclear energy infrastructure, and nuclear weapons.

Rosatom’s reactors worldwide and implications for the global nuclear order. Scholars have begun to identify the new role of nuclear energy infrastructure in war, but what is missing is a serious reckoning with not only the environmental and human effects of attacks on nuclear energy infrastructure but also the ways in which such threats intersect with traditional nuclear signaling. Nuclear energy is not a new wartime technology akin to drones or cyber warfare. Instead, it should be understood as an object of evolving strategic thought. This is not to say that signaling with nuclear power plants isn’t dangerous; to the contrary, it is extraordinarily dangerous. But experts should resist the urge to view nuclear energy and nuclear weapons as distinct threats. The risks of nuclear weapons—physical radiation and uninhibited escalation—can also occur in a world in which nuclear powers see nuclear energy as a platform on which to project their strategic objectives.

This moment not only requires a clear articulation of the risks but also a willingness of all states to reject the use of nuclear energy for wartime signaling. This refusal crucially includes nuclear weapons states but also countries across the world who have increasingly become recipients of Rosatom power plants in what has sometimes been dubbed “the new nuclear age.” As Rosatom’s civil nuclear reactor enterprise expands, Russia’s allies and partners, neutral states, and the global nuclear community must take steps to lessen these risks.

Even for Russian allies and partners like Iran, Rosatom’s nuclear power plants do not serve as a meaningful form of defense but rather as a way for Russia to provide rhetorical—but not tangible—support. For example, Iran has not benefited from Russian signaling as it continues to face devastating losses. Meanwhile Russia has received much-needed financial relief from oil sanctions lifted by the Trump administration. Russia’s allies considering contracts with Rosatom might take the Iranian case as a cautionary tale………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Nuclear energy at the 2026 NPT Review Conference. At the ongoing NPT Review Conference, states have already raised the alarm about threats to nuclear energy infrastructure during wartime. The European Union, for instance, urged Russia “to refrain from carrying [out] attacks on such infrastructure, which constitute a serious threat to nuclear safety and security.” The Non-Aligned Movement broadly condemned strikes on nuclear infrastructure. Both statements treated risks at nuclear energy installations as the unfortunate byproduct of careless actions and armed conflict in the vicinity of power plants. But the connection between nuclear energy and nuclear escalation is not accidental; it is the result of an increasingly prevalent nuclear signaling strategy.

During the Cold War, US and international diplomats saw nuclear energy and other civil nuclear technologies as the peaceful partner to nuclear weapons, an assumption embedded in the NPT and other global nuclear treaties. But recent developments raise the possibility that nuclear energy installations will increasingly become flashpoints in war.

Preventing this outcome requires states to hold each other accountable and to forcefully denounce the use of nuclear energy infrastructure in nuclear signaling. At the NPT Review Conference, state parties should, at a minimum, resolve to follow and implement the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Seven Indispensable Pillars for nuclear safety and security in Ukraine, which include resolutions to maintain the physical integrity and backup power supply of nuclear plants……………….. https://thebulletin.org/2026/05/how-russia-signals-nuclear-resolve-with-civilian-nuclear-energy-infrastructure/

May 19, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russia’s Threat Of A Massive Retaliatory Strike On Kiev Likely Isn’t A Bluff

Andrew Korybko, May 07, 2026, https://korybko.substack.com/p/russias-threat-of-a-massive-retaliatory

Russia can’t afford to discredit itself abroad, nor can Putin’s ruling United Russia party afford to discredit itself at home four months before the next polls, by threatening overwhelming retaliation against Ukraine if it attacks Moscow’s Victory Day parade only to symbolically retaliate or do nothing at all.

The Russian Defense Ministry warned local civilians and the staff of diplomatic missions in Kiev of their country’s plans to launch a massive retaliatory strike on the city center if Ukraine goes through with Zelensky’s threat to attack Moscow’s Victory Day parade on 9 May. This was followed by Russia announcing ballistic missile tests from Kamchatka from 6-10 May. Shortly afterwards, the Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated the Defense Ministry’s warning, thus ensuring that the world is aware of it.

This threat likely isn’t a bluff for three sequential reasons. The first is that Russia wants to deter Ukraine from attacking Moscow’s Victory Day parade for self-evident reasons, both relating to optics and the security of its VIPs, to which end it threatened overwhelming retaliation if this happens. The second reason is that Russia cannot threaten such a response without actually going through with it if provoked, otherwise it would irredeemably discredit itself, and more audacious attacks would then likely follow.

And third, Russia is finally signaling its willingness to overwhelmingly retaliate against decision-making centers in Kiev per the Foreign Ministry’s additionally specified threat in the event of Ukraine carrying out this high-profile provocation due to its hardline Kremlin faction partially superceding its moderate one. To explain, Putin hitherto restrained his military due his belief in “The Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” as well as his concerns about an uncontrollable escalation spiral sparking World War III.

Once Trump returned and responded positively to Putin’s offer of dialogue for resolving the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine, which Biden rejected, Putin and his fellow moderates dangled a resource-centric strategic partnership for incentivizing compromises. The US was receptive to such a partnership, but Russia rejected its demanded compromises that were presented as a precondition, while the US rejected Russia’s own such demands and didn’t coerce compliance from Ukraine or NATO either.

While Trump declined to escalate the Ukrainian Conflict amid this impasse, he still greenlit the rolling back of Russian influence across the world in a bid to coerce Putin into the US’ demanded compromise, namely freezing the conflict in exchange for sanctions relief without resolving the root issues. Informally known as the “Neo-Reagan Doctrine”, it’s placed Russia under pressure in at least 15 different countries, thus discrediting the moderate faction and prompting some among it like Putin to rethink their views.

The Third Gulf War, in which Iran attacked regional US bases without triggering an uncontrollable escalation spiral, then convinced Putin to finally listen to the hardliners who’ve been urging massive strikes on Ukrainian decision-making centers in Kiev since the get-go. Public opinion, which is important ahead of September’s next Duma elections, has long aligned with the hardliners on this issue. Putin now seems to have assented but only in retaliation to Ukrainian attacks against Moscow’s Victory Day parade.

These factors make it unlikely that Russia is bluffing, in which case the country itself wouldn’t just be discredited abroad, but so too would the ruling United Russia party be discredited in voters’ eyes four months before the next polls. There’s already speculation of a protest vote in support of the communist and nationalist opposition parties, which might prompt various reforms if it happens, but a large-scale one driven by any hypothetical bluff could herald an era of uncertainty that Putin would prefer to avoid.

May 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Horror as Russia ‘plans nuclear weapon in space’ that could cause global chaos

Gen Whiting believes the next major global conflict will “likely be a war that starts in space”. He said rival nations have watched how heavily the US and its allies rely on satellites and space technology for modern warfare

General Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command, said America was ‘very concerned’ about Russian plans to put a nuclear weapon in space that would target satellites

 Tim Hanlon News Reporter and Catherine Mackinlay, 16 Apr 2026

Russia is feared to be planning to put a nuclear weapon in space that is capable of sparking global chaos by targeting satellites.

A United States military chief has warned Moscow is considering using a nuclear anti-satellite weapon which could destroy thousands of satellites and cause communications disruption across the world, dubbing it a “Space Pearl Harbor”.

General Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command, said America was “very concerned” about the Kremlin’s plans, which he said form part of a wider pattern of Russian aggression in space since the war in Ukraine began.

The four-star general warned Russia has already been carrying out “sustained satellite communication and GPS jamming” on such a scale that it is “putting civilian airliners at risk”.

Speaking on The Times podcast The General & The Journalist, Gen Whiting said: “Russia remains a sophisticated space power and they continue to invest in counter-space weapons. They are thinking about placing in orbit a nuclear anti-satellite weapon that would hold at risk everyone’s satellites in low Earth orbit, and that would be an outcome that we just couldn’t tolerate.”

He said Russia sees the US and NATO as too strong in conventional warfare and believes attacking space systems could “level the battlefield”.

Gen Whiting said: “From a Russian perspective, they look at the United States, they look at NATO and they see an overmatch there of conventional arms.

“And they believe that novel ways of trying to undermine the United States and NATO, such as by neutralising our space capabilities, helps them to level the battlefield. I won’t speak about our intelligence sources and methods, but obviously it’s a report that we’re very concerned about.”

A nuclear weapon in orbit would be a major breach of the Outer Space Treaty, which Russia has signed. The warning is the strongest public intervention yet from a senior US military officer on the threat posed by Moscow.

Russia’s alleged ambitions first emerged in February 2024 when Pentagon officials briefed members of Congress behind closed doors. Since then, the US House intelligence committee has been pressing the White House to declassify information about the project so politicians can discuss the scale of the threat.

Experts fear a nuclear blast in low Earth orbit could destroy up to 10,000 satellites – around 80% of all those currently in space. Military intelligence, communications, internet, mobile phone services and GPS could all be crippled.

Gen Whiting also warned Russia’s GPS jamming is already affecting civilian flights across eastern and southern Europe. He said: “When we put at risk civilian airliners full of citizens just trying to go on business or holiday, that’s incredibly problematic.”

He said both Russia and China are rapidly building space weapons, with Beijing developing jammers, directed energy weapons and anti-satellite rockets. The general urged Sir Keir Starmer’s government to spend far more on Britain’s space defences, with the UK spending less than 1% of its defence budget on space, compared with 4% in Germany and 3% in France.

Gen Whiting believes the next major global conflict will “likely be a war that starts in space”. He said rival nations have watched how heavily the US and its allies rely on satellites and space technology for modern warfare.

Despite the growing space arms race, he insisted a conflict in orbit is “not inevitable”. He added: “Our goal each and every day is to wake up and deter that from happening so that mankind can continue to take advantage of all the benefits of space.”

April 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment