WASHINGTON — On the surface, it’s hard not to see visions of World War III in Russia’s recent threats and provocations against the West.
On Thursday, the Kremlin hit Ukraine with a new type of ballistic missile — and then threatened that it could test the rockets against Western countries that supply missiles to Ukraine for use in Russia — i.e., the United States.
Two days earlier, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russian policy now allows it to use nuclear weapons to retaliate against nations who strike Russia with conventional weapons — including the US-made ATACMS missiles that President Biden agreed to let Ukraine fire into Russia.
To top it off, Ukraine’s former military chief, Valery Zaluzhny told an audience, “I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun.”
But far from being on the brink of global armageddon, experts tell The Post these moves amount to the same old irresponsible nuclear saber-rattling Putin has long been known for.
More to the point, they show that the Russian dictator is becoming increasingly desperate in the lead-up to President-elect Donald Trump’s second term.
“It’s certainly signaling to the west. I think the Russians are obviously concerned that we’ve allowed Ukraine this permission to strike in Russia with Western missiles,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Russia program director John Hardie told The Post.
“I think in general, they are trying to cow the west into dropping its support for Ukraine and sort of letting Russia have its way.”
Those fear tactics may have delayed President Biden from taking more decisive action to support Ukraine from the war’s start, but it’s unclear how that tactic might work on Trump, who has a record of not being intimidated and has reportedly signaled support for Ukraine striking deep into Russia, a source told The Post this week.
Still, the launch provided new insight into Russia’s weapons development, as it was the debut of a new rocket described by US officials as an intermediate- or medium-range ballistic missile, Hardie said.
The newly revealed missile likely would have been banned under the US-Russia Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, from which Trump in his first term withdrew the US in 2018 after Moscow violated the agreement by developing an intermediate-range cruise missile dubbed the SSC-8, Hardie said.
Russia reportedly notified the United States of its intended launch, prompting the US embassy in Kyiv to briefly close this week. Nuclear-armed nations have a duty to inform each other of planned major missile tests to reduce the risk of miscalculation that could lead to accidental nuclear war.
“I think we should take it seriously — it’s a new Russian capability — but I don’t think we should be deterred by it,” said Hardie.
“I think we obviously should not be intimidated by these sorts of things,” Hardie said. “That would be an enormous step for Russia to take that I don’t see that as likely.”
The announcement echoed Putin’s Tuesday nuclear posture change, which held that he would allow Moscow to launch nuclear attacks in response to strikes on its soil by non-nuclear or “conventional” weapons.
Experts also discredited that policy as a fear tactic, with Institute for the Study of War’s George Barros telling The Post that the Tuesday that doctrine change was “simply just a Russian way of signaling, and it actually kind of smells of desperation because the Russians understand that they are vulnerable, and their means to respond to this is are actually quite limited.”
“They’re pulling out all the remaining breaks that they have on what they can do to signal and try to get us to continue deferring ourselves, but it looks like it’s failing.”
That’s largely because Putin has a clear deterrence from launching such a strike on such a country due to the NATO alliance, which holds that an attack on a member state represents an act of war that would invite all of the alliance’s 32 members to respond.
“Launching a missile against a NATO country would be an act of war,” Hardie said. “I do not think Russian nuclear use is likely. And I think there have been points in this war where it was more likely than it is now, and I think even then it was still unlikely, so I would not lose sleep over the possibility of Russian nuclear use, and certainly not against Western countries.
In the coming days, Hardie said he believes the world will discover more about Russia’s new missile that may help shine a light on what’s happening within the Kremlin’s defense industry. However, Hardie said the weapon is likely still under development.
