Changing the Nuclear Game: Why the Russian offensive on Kharkiv evokes memories of the Caribbean crisis

The offensive on Kharkiv, according to military analysts, is the first phase of Russia's summer campaign, aimed at bringing the Kremlin a decisive victory in the war. Using its numerical advantage, Russia intends to create threats to break the front in several locations, forcing the Ukrainian armed forces to disperse its forces and eventually make a breakthrough, most likely in the Donbas. With a shortage of ammunition and manpower, Ukraine's ability to resist is also limited by the ban on using US weapons to strike Russian territory. Russian logistics centres, reinforcement routes and airfields remain invulnerable. Experts say that the military situation makes it critically important for Ukraine to be provided with this means of defence. However, Washington is deterred from such a decision by Moscow's successful use of the threat of nuclear escalation. In this case, the Kremlin announced that it was conducting exercises on the use of tactical nuclear weapons right at the start of its summer offensive and close to the theatre of operations. Analysts note that such blatant nuclear blackmail and brinkmanship last took place 60 years ago during the Cuban Missile Crisis. After that shock, the USSR and the US preferred to refrain from such strategies. However, if the West does not provide an adequate response to nuclear blackmail today, other nuclear powers will start to adopt this tactic. The only viable strategy for Washington and its allies is to recognize that the old rules of nuclear deterrence are broken and the world is approaching a new state of ‘brinkmanship’.

Plans for the Russian summer campaign and Ukraine's ability to counter it

The Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region, which began in early May has become the most serious challenge to the Ukrainian resistance since the beginning of the war. It has cast doubt on recent statements from Washington that it did not expect a major breakthrough from Russia and assumed that it could only achieve a tactical advantage in certain areas. Noted military analysts Michael Kofman and Rob Lee, who have visited Ukrainian Armed Forces positions multiple times, commented to The New York Times that the main threat is not the fall of Kharkiv (experts believe the Russian army lacks the resources for its capture), but that the defence of the region forces the Ukrainian armed forces to commit too many troops. This leaves other defensive lines exposed, risking a collapse of the front in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and making the Sumy and Chernihiv regions more vulnerable to a possible invasion. The goal of the Russian forces is not to storm Kharkiv, but to reach positions that will allow Russian artillery to shell it. This would destabilise the situation in the city, which had a pre-war population of 1.5 million, and would become a new psychological pressure point on Ukraine.

Jack Watling, an expert specialising in land warfare, provides a more detailed plan for the Russian offensive in his commentary for the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI). The grouping of Russian armed forces in Ukraine has reached 510,000 military personnel, giving them numerical superiority along the nearly 1200 km front line. Over the past four months, the Russian army has attempted offensives and conducted diversionary raids at various points along the contact line, forcing the Ukrainian forces to disperse their artillery and expend ammunition to repel these attacks. The Russian army's summer offensive will begin with an attack on Kharkiv, forcing the Ukrainian army to commit additional forces to defend the country's second-largest city, then the Russian army will press on the other side of the front line, threatening to seize the city of Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine will need to deploy reserves, which will weaken its grouping in the Donbas, where Moscow will direct its main strike to cut Ukrainian supply lines connecting Kostiantynivka and Kramatorsk. This would, in turn, allow it to continue a systematic offensive in the north and south, destroying Ukrainian artillery.

The current situation is the result of several factors. These include the six-month delay in providing US aid to Kyiv and the delay in announcing mobilisation in Ukraine, against the background of Russia’s active recruitment of contract workers, the scale of which is believed to have reached 30,000 per month. However, there is another factor influencing the course of this war and the Kharkiv offensive in particular. While Russia is waging a full-scale war against Ukraine, Ukraine does not have the ability to wage a full-scale war against Russia.

Today's battlefield situation requires Ukraine to start striking targets inside Russia, experts from RAND have written in a commentary titled ‘Biden's Catch 22 in Ukraine’. The situation demands that the Ukrainian armed forces be able to hit railway junctions to prevent further Russian army advances, as well as Russian air bases, bombers and missile systems. Striking these targets would help halt the destruction of Ukrainian territory even in the absence of sufficient air defence systems, which Ukraine lacks. However, so far, only the United Kingdom has allowed Ukraine to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles to hit targets on Russian territory. The United States has not yet permitted the use of long-range ATACMS missiles, and Germany has not transferred long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, fearing they might be used to strike targets such as the bridge to annexed Crimea.

This situation is what experts call a ‘Catch 22’ that creates an asymmetry in favour of Russia. The reason for this is the position of the US administration and President Biden, who, on the one hand, promise that support for Kyiv will continue ‘as long as necessary’, and, on the other hand, fear escalation from Russia, which could draw the US into the conflict and poses the threat of a nuclear confrontation. However, the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine is pushing the West to change its approach to the conflict and the associated security risks. Otherwise, a likely defeat for Ukraine would deliver a significant blow to the authority of the United States and, consequently, the entire international security system.

The Kharkiv offensive and the Cuban Missile Crisis

In the American political establishment, there is a consensus that, while supporting Kyiv, the Biden administration must avoid being drawn into the conflict and a nuclear confrontation. The Kremlin is aware of this, and this incentivises its nuclear blackmail, which, as Heather Williams, an expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), notes, the Kremlin has effectively resorted to since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Just as the active phase of the Russian offensive was beginning, the Russian Defence Ministry announced an exercise in the Southern Military District simulating the use of tactical nuclear weapons and called the exercise a response to ‘provocative statements and threats by some Western officials against the Russian Federation’.

Rose Gottemoeller, an authoritative expert on nuclear deterrence and former NATO Deputy Secretary-General, in an article titled ‘The Changing Nuclear Mind Game’ published in Foreign Policy, points out that Moscow's constant use of nuclear threats is atypical behaviour of a nuclear power. The last time such behaviour was seen was during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Since then, after the critical confrontation, the US and the USSR, although they fought indirect wars in many countries around the world — from Angola to Vietnam — did not resort to such blackmail to achieve conventional military objectives. Since the beginning of the current war, however, it has become a constant tactic for Putin. The Kremlin justifies its behaviour by arguing that the invasion of Ukraine was motivated by an existential threat to Russia, and that NATO support for Ukraine is linked to the risk of strategic defeat for Russia.

Putin's nuclear blackmail tactics reflect the changed international context. On the one hand, Heather Williams notes, this tactic is possible because it does not provoke strong rejection among the countries of the Global South. Even at the June 2022 meeting of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which included many countries from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa, no joint statement condemning Russian nuclear threats was made. Countries of the Global South tend to view such a statement as playing into the hands of the US, while they see Putin's nuclear rhetoric as merely a tool to deter active US and NATO intervention in the conflict.

On the other hand, the heightened nuclear rhetoric has raised serious concerns among these countries, Williams notes. When in October 2022, against the backdrop of the threat of a collapse of the front due to the successful counteroffensive of the Ukrainian armed forces near Kharkiv, the Russian military leadership, according to Western analysts, considered the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons, Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly called on the international community to ‘jointly counter the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons’, and Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh warned his Russian counterpart that the use of nuclear weapons would go ‘against the basic principles of the international community's nuclear programme’. Thus, a new situation arises where these countries, particularly China, have tools to restrain Russia (including economic measures), while traditional deterrence tools available to the West are losing their effectiveness.

This situation turns the war in Ukraine into a one-gate game for the Kremlin. In case of success, it cements its victory; in case of failure, it resorts to blackmail and avoids defeat. As Pavel Baev, an expert at the Centre on the United States and Europe, notes in a commentary for The Brookings Institution, the threat of a new round of nuclear blackmail will increase even more significantly if Russia's summer offensive is not successful and the Ukrainian armed forces are able to seize the strategic initiative on the battlefield. Arms control and nuclear non-proliferation expert and former US ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer urges the West not to give in to blackmail and to keep its composure. Russia's willingness to raise the degree of nuclear escalation is becoming the ‘new normal,’ when in fact Putin neither wants nor is ready for nuclear war.

Rose Gottemoeller believes that leaders in the United States, as well as in Europe and Asia, must adapt to the new situation of ‘brinkmanship’ in nuclear war, akin to the situation the world faced in 1962. They need to regain the initiative in setting the rules of deterrence. Otherwise, nuclear blackmail will continue to be replicated. In addition to Putin, Pyongyang may want to exploit its accessible benefits, and China will undoubtedly do the same in the future.

Gottemoeller advises Washington to maintain the high effectiveness in deterrence components, including command and control systems. This should not appear as mere sabre-rattling but as solid evidence that deterrence forces are ready for combat if necessary. Proper communication between the US and the global community, especially potential nuclear aggressors, will also be important. Gottemoeller urges careful use of terms like ‘strategic defeat’ to avoid situations where an aggressor country presents Washington and its allies as an existential threat. Finally, attention should be paid to modernising the US nuclear arsenal and thereby demonstrating to the world its continued superiority. ‘The nuclear deterrence system is evidently changing, but its future definition should not be left in the hands of aggressors’, she concludes.