As of: March 1, 2024, 6:55 p.m
By: Lisa Mahnke
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Split
Classified Russian military documents reveal nuclear plans.
China is surprisingly also an issue.
Is Putin messing with Xi Jinping?
Moscow - Classified Russian military documents are intended to show that Russia's inhibition threshold for the use of tactical nuclear weapons is significantly lower than previously assumed.
The 29 secret military documents from 2008 to 2014, obtained by the
Financial Times
, also discuss a possible response to an invasion by China.
Despite its display of friendship with Beijing, Moscow appears to have a certain distrust of its brother state.
Among other things, the documents are said to contain war games and presentations by naval officers who analyze the principles for the use of nuclear weapons.
In summary, the situations in which the Russian losses would “irrevocably lead to a failure to repel a major attack by the enemy” could be summarized.
Even though the documents are at least ten years old, experts say the information still appears to be relevant.
Russia's criteria: Nuclear weapons if targets are not achieved “through conventional means”.
“They show that the operational inhibition threshold for the use of nuclear weapons is quite low when the desired result cannot be achieved through conventional means,” the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin told the
Financial Times
.
The criteria for such a nuclear response include a hostile invasion of Russian territory or, more specifically, the destruction of 20 percent of Russian submarines with strategic ballistic missiles or a simultaneous strike on a main and a reserve coastal command center.
China and Russia are actually friends: mistrust comes as a surprise
What is particularly surprising, however, is the defense plan against China, which shows Moscow's deep mistrust of China.
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are two leaders who are actually united in their friendship, or at least the common enemy of Western “hegemony,” as China calls it.
China and Russia have increasingly moved closer together in recent years.
Will there now be a break in the documents?
© IMAGO/SNA/Sergei Savostyanov
The two states showed their first alliance aspirations not only when Xi Jinping took office in 2012, but also beforehand, for example with the agreement against a nuclear first strike in 2001. The Ukraine war further contributed to strengthening these relations, because China was making advances there too not from Russia's side.
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The various scenarios in the training material would show that nuclear weapons represent an important part of Russian defense policy.
In one of the scenarios with China, the commander-in-chief gives the order to use nuclear weapons as soon as the enemy deploys units from the second echelon and wants to continue attacking.
Russia strengthens eastern front - China reacts to Russia's deterrence tactics
“Russia continues to strengthen and train its nuclear-capable missiles in the Far East near the border with China.
Many of these systems only have the range to hit China,” William Alberque, director of strategy, technology and arms control at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told the
Financial Times
.
Alberque assumed that Putin's inhibitions were greater when it came to Ukraine because it had significantly fewer nuclear capacities or options for an invasive attack.
“There will be no winners in a nuclear war, and China calls on all parties to exercise restraint,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said, according to Eastern European broadcaster
Nexta
.
“The most important thing is that the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons is absolutely transparent and stated in the doctrine.
As for the documents mentioned, we strongly doubt their authenticity,” a Putin spokesman said, according to the
Financial Times.
Russia is the largest nuclear power in the world – not only a deterrent but also a threat
The Federation of American Scientists estimates Russia's 2023 inventory at a total of 5,889 nuclear weapons warheads, with approximately 1,674 deployable strategic warheads.
This makes Russia the largest nuclear power, even ahead of the USA, with a total of 5,244 nuclear warheads, of which around 1,670 are deployable and strategic.
The doctrine of nuclear threats and armament is also summarized as “escalate in order to de-escalate” and is also known to many Western states from the Cold War.
Deterrence is intended to avoid war - a logic that effectively led to the feeling of an ongoing nuclear threat in the Cold War and that was only relaxed through a common disarmament policy.
(lismah)