RUSSIAN NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY IN THE WAR ON UKRAINE: CHALLENGING BY PRACTICE

Abstract

Early morning of February 24, 2022, Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine was accom- panied by the public TV speech of President V. Putin, who strongly warned the West from interference in Russia’s «special military operation» against Ukraine. The clear hint of the possibility of nuclear use has defined the whole of Moscow’s war campaign against Ukraine. Since then, the «nuclear trump» appeared in Russian official and media rhetoric almost every month, giving a new «red line» Moscow was drawing to the West.Everything, from the newly annexed territories up to weapons supplies to Ukraine, was declared by Moscow as a casus belli, maybe even a possible nuclear war. However, the first year of Russia’s war against Ukraine has shown the clear limitations of the Russian nuclear deterrence strategy. Many of the initially drawn Russian red lines turned false, and their gradual shifting by the West and Ukraine has not caused any further escalation. On the contrary, the multiplication of nuclear signaling has resulted in shrinking credibility and, ultimately, the declining marginal utility of Russian nuclear threats.Generally, one can observe the progressive exhaustion of nuclear compellence as one of the features embedded in the Russian deterrence strategy. The latter, in its turn, puts certain limits on the utility of nuclear deterrence as a universal policy tool. Therefore, the article hypothesises that nuclear deterrence cannot be considered a universal political strategy allowing states to maximise their foreign policy goals. This article aims to identify the peculiarities of Russian nuclear diplomacy in Russia’s war against Ukraine in its declarative and practical aspects. Given the complex nature of the goal, the authors apply three main methodological approaches: a comparative analysis of the behaviour of Russia and the United States through the prism of their deterrence strategies, a content analysis of the Russian and American officials’ speeches, and the theory of deterrence.Studying the features of the Russian strategy of deterrence and escalation, the article examines the stages of the Kremlin’s use of deterrence and coercion towards Ukraine, the United States, and Western states, determines their effectiveness, and factors that influence the dynamics of the emergence of threats to use nuclear weapons by Russia.The conclusions state that in the war against Ukraine, the effectiveness of Russian deterrence to guarantee «red lines» is limited, and the primary tool of influence and coercion is escalation.