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.
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.