Narrative X-ray: Russia’s Nuclear Fist

In this narrative X-ray, we will take a closer look at how the narrative of Russia’s powerful nuclear fist, which is ready to turn any enemy of the Kremlin into a “radioactive pile of ashes” in a matter of minutes, was created and maintained.

Recently, nuclear rhetoric is heard more and more from the Kremlin, as there is less reason to talk about the progress of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. Even if all the rest of Russia’s much-vaunted military power is in reality as it is, at least the size of a nuclear fist is not to be doubted – and no one dares to test it anyway.

 

How was Russia’s nuclear fist born?

In Russia, like the rest of Europe, research of radioactive elements was carried out already in the beginning of the 20th century. From the 1920s to the end of the 

1930s, Russian physicists, in cooperation with European colleagues, were engaged in research on the further development of atomic physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, which was led by the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford. Research aimed at the advancement of nuclear physics in the Soviet Union was led by Abram Ioffe, who was the director of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology.

The Soviet scientific community discussed the possibility of creating a nuclear bomb as early as the 1930s, and in 1940 even came up with a specific proposal for the development of such a weapon, but it did not attract Stalin’s attention, and a full-scale program to create a nuclear weapon began as a priority only after entering the war with Germany.

After the Kremlin found out about the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the program continued aggressively, and the creation of a nuclear weapon was given a good acceleration by the intelligence gathered about the US’s Manhattan Project. Through Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, the Americans’ information also reached the Russians. Imprisoned German scientists were involved in the creation of the Soviet atom, and on August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear weapon at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan, the design of which was based on the “Fat Man” plutonium bomb dropped by the United States on Nagasaki.

After that, the US-Soviet arms race got into full swing, and new and more powerful nuclear weapons and ways to deliver them were created. Russian physicist and later social figure, dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov also participated in the development of the hydrogen bomb. It was under his leadership that the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested – the more than 50-megaton Tsar Bomba, which was detonated over Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961 – was completed.

By the mid-1960s, both the United States and the Soviet Union had sufficient nuclear power to completely destroy their adversary. Both sides developed the ability to launch a devastating retaliatory attack, primarily by submarines, even after a first strike from the other side. This policy became known as mutually assured destruction (MAD) – each side knew that any attack on the other would be destructive to themselves, so at least in theory it forced them to refrain from attacking their opponent. This does not mean that preparations were not made for this at all levels – up to the civil defence exercises in schools and the sewing of cotton-gauze masks (film recommendation: Jaak Kilm’s and Kiur Aarma’s documentary “Disco and nuclear war” https://jupiter.err.ee/1144506/disko-and-nuclear war).

 

What story does it tell us?

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia inherited the former superpower’s entire arsenal of nuclear weapons. Even if Russia is no longer a competitive power in the world’s top league, either economically or militarily, it still has the largest number of nuclear weapons in the world. According to ICANW, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Russia has about 6,000 active nuclear weapons (https://www.icanw.org/russia), which is more than the United States (about 5,500). Every other country in the world lags far behind the two, with China in third place having around 350 nuclear weapons, according to ICANW.

According to the threat report published this year by US intelligence, Russia increasingly relies on nuclear weapons for its security and continues to work on their modernization. During military parades, massive intercontinental nuclear missiles always roll across Moscow’s Red Square. Russian state media reports on the mountain-high superiority of the new nuclear weapons – Sarmat and Poseidon – over their competitors.

Under Putin’s leadership, Russia has taken a clear direction to restore the former empire, and with it, the country’s nuclear rhetoric has undergone a renaissance. “Russia is the only country that can turn the United States into a pile of radioactive ash,” declared Russian state television head Dmitry Kisselyev back in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea. Since the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine, nuclear threats from the Kremlin have become increasingly hysterical. “The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war could trigger a nuclear war,” Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in a Telegram post this January. Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi last October 18, Putin announced that in the event of a nuclear war, Russians would go to paradise and Russia’s attackers would simply die. On Russian state television and social media sites, experts and presenters constantly warn that if Europe continues to support Ukraine, these countries may turn to ashes.

 

Who are these threats aimed at?

On the one hand, the threats are intended for the countries to which they are verbally addressed – Western countries that support Ukraine. In particular, they are trying to influence those members of the electorate of democratic countries who still remember the existential nuclear fear of the Cold War and who, based on this, can influence the governments of their countries to refrain from helping Ukraine. Mostly, the decision-makers of different countries are also from the generation that still remembers the fear of the nuclear fist of the Soviets, which shadowed 

their childhood, and who therefore do not want to “anger the Russian bear” too easily. Does it still make sense to risk the outbreak of the third world war and a global nuclear catastrophe on behalf of one of the former Soviet republics?

On the other hand – and this is much more frightening – according to several experts, with such aggressive nuclear rhetoric, Russia’s population is also being prepared for a possible nuclear conflict. Today’s masters of the Kremlin probably know from their own experience that this kind of intimidation allows the state to effectively control people and mobilize them against a common enemy.

 

What are its goals?

In addition to the already mentioned intimidation of their own people and strangers, an important goal is certainly to increase the importance of Russia on the world stage. Putin’s Russia wants to be seen as one of the world’s great powers, like the Soviet Empire, equal to the United States and China. That is why, according to the rhetoric spread in the national media, Russia is at war in Ukraine not with the Ukrainians, but with the USA and the collective West.

Domestically, too, by waving a nuclear fist, they want to divert attention from the failures in Ukraine and assure their citizens that they are still the world’s leading nuclear power, feared by all others.

 

How is the nuclear fist narrative going now?

In his research written for Chatham House, Keir Giles finds that Russia’s long-term scare campaign has been moderately successful.

In his opinion, the clearest example has been the refraining of Western supporters of Ukraine, including the United States, from providing Ukraine with the military aid necessary to win the war. Western countries have been constantly careful not to give Ukraine’s armed forces weapons that could threaten Russia. Aid has been carefully calibrated, and Ukraine’s allies have sensed Russia’s red lines and acted only when they turned out to be fictitious.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly cited Russian threats of escalation as a direct reason to prevent or limit aid to Ukraine, citing the desire to “do everything possible to avoid an escalation that could lead to a world war.”

The successful warning and the associated fear of a situation where Russia loses patience also continue as one of the arguments for a cease-fire in Ukraine at any cost.

On the other hand, Russia has already used its nuclear threat so much without any real consequences that its effect is starting to disappear. As the latest escalation, Russia announced in March this year that it had signed an agreement with Belarus to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on its territory. In his comment to ERR, security expert Rainer Saks found that Western countries almost do not react at all to the nuclear threats that Russia makes.

Academics and arms control negotiators have debated for years how to precisely define tactical nuclear weapons. These are nuclear weapons that could be used to achieve specific tactical objectives on the battlefield, not to destroy, say, the largest cities in the United States or Russia (strategic nuclear weapons).

Russia has more such less destructive nuclear weapons than any other country, and there has been speculation that the Kremlin may use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine as a last resort, to which Western countries may not respond equally in fear of a global nuclear war. However, the United States also has approximately 200 such weapons deployed in Europe and the Americans have signalled at the highest political level that any use of nuclear weapons by Russia would not go unanswered. 

However, it cannot be completely dismissed, because no one disputes the existence of Russia’s nuclear fist, and even if it is not in the best condition, it is the largest in the world in terms of nuclear weapons. Keir Giles also states in the summary of his report that although the corridor of uncertainty is much narrower than widely assumed, there is still a greater than zero chance that Vladimir Putin could decide in favour of a nuclear strike, given all the circumstances.

 

The images used are screenshots from the referenced pages. The infographic was created by Propastop’s editors.