Russia Doesn’t Stop its Nuclear Blackmail: What Challenges Does this Pose for the World?

In May 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that he “hopes that there will be no need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine”. This “hope”, instead of a clear prohibition or assurance of renunciation of the use of nuclear force, is another manifestation of nuclear rhetoric that has become a blackmail tool of the Kremlin.

Russia's Return to the Practice of Nuclear Blackmail

Meanwhile, former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has threatened Europe with nuclear weapons in response to “unfriendly actions” by the West. These statements are not exceptions. They are part of a large-scale strategy in which Russia is systematically returning to the practice of nuclear blackmail as a foreign policy tool. The Russian Federation, which officially declares nuclear weapons exclusively as a deterrent, de facto uses them as an instrument of pressure, intimidation and destabilization of the world order.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin has repeatedly resorted to nuclear threats, including in a statement on February 27 about bringing nuclear forces to a “special mode of combat alert.” At the same time, strategic deterrence exercises were conducted, and Russian propaganda openly threatened a nuclear strike against the West.

In 2022-2023, Moscow took a number of demonstrative steps:

seizing Zaporizhzhia NPP and turning it into an object of military pressure;

deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus for the first time since the Cold War;

termination of participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and withdrawal of ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

All of this sets a precedent for Russia's withdrawal from the international arms control architecture established after World War II.

Russian Nuclear Blackmail as a Political Technology

According to the Foreign Policy Council's Ukrainian Prism study, Russia uses nuclear weapons not as a real combat weapon, but as a geopolitical blackmail tool that allows it to compensate for strategic defeats, limited combat capability, and international isolation. Since 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, and especially after 2022, Moscow has sought to intimidate not only Ukraine but also the whole of Europe and NATO in order to curb military assistance to Kyiv and raise the stakes in negotiations.

The Kremlin's tactic is to create the perception that any serious defeat of Russia could cause an “existential threat,” which, according to Russian nuclear doctrine, could justify the use of nuclear weapons. However, this doctrine is based on vague wording that allows the Kremlin to interpret the “existential threat” in any way it wants.

In other words, blackmail is mainly psychological and political in nature, aimed at paralyzing the will of Western leaders and societies that fear escalation and refuse to respond decisively to aggression.

Russian officials and propagandists have repeatedly stated that in the event of an offensive by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Crimea, Russia reserves the right to use all means of defense, including nuclear weapons. One of the Kremlin's key mouthpieces, Dmitry Medvedev, has explicitly mentioned the possibility of a strike in the event of an attack on “Russian territory,” i.e., the occupied regions.

Since 2014, Russian media have been actively using this rhetoric: “Russia can turn the United States into radioactive ash” (D. Kiselyov) or ‘we will go to heaven and they will die’ (V. Putin). Such statements are aimed at shaping the image of Russia as an “unpredictable state with a nuclear arsenal”. The main goal of this rhetoric is to create the perception among Western society and the political class that Russia is ready for an apocalypse in order to maintain control over the space it considers its own.

Russia's Nuclear Blackmail as a Threat to Global Security

The systematic use of nuclear blackmail by the Russian Federation not only undermines stability on the European continent, but also sets a precedent that could destroy the global security architecture. The scale of this threat is multilayered, ranging from regional destabilization to setting global nuclear precedents.

Russia is increasingly demonstrating that it is ready to use its nuclear weapons not for deterrence, but to achieve geopolitical goals. This is in direct contradiction to the principles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), in particular the obligation not to use nuclear weapons to exert pressure or threats.

If the world allows Russia to achieve strategic results through nuclear blackmail, it will set a catastrophic precedent: other authoritarian states (e.g., Iran, North Korea) will be motivated to develop nuclear arsenals to exert similar pressure on the world.

Putin's and Shoigu's statements in 2025 about the possibility of using nuclear weapons show a deep crisis in the collective security system. The UN has no effective mechanisms to punish nuclear blackmail. This makes international law symbolic and stimulates an arms race.

In addition, Russia's withdrawal from the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and the suspension of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) are destroying the last vestiges of the decades-old nuclear control architecture.

The constant presence of nuclear weapons in Russian politics and media makes them the norm. This creates a discourse of fear, in which democracies are forced to constantly limit their actions (e.g., arms supplies to Ukraine) for fear of “nuclear escalation.”

If the West does not show a resolute refusal to recognize nuclear blackmail as a legitimate tool, countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, and even the EU may reconsider their attitude to nuclear weapons possession. Thus, Russia's example stimulates a global arms race, where nuclear weapons will become not an exception but the norm for states with geopolitical ambitions.

The West's delays and constant doubts do not reduce the risk of nuclear war; on the contrary, they increase it. Indecision and fear of escalation are interpreted by the Kremlin as weakness, which only encourages the continuation of blackmail.

Russian nuclear blackmail is not just rhetoric or bluff. It is a strategic tool of a revanchist state seeking to change the rules of the world order. Tolerating it means undermining decades of nuclear non-proliferation efforts, losing confidence in international law, and creating a new world where the rule of force replaces the rule of law.

The world cannot allow blackmail to become the norm. The best response is to support Ukraine, clearly declare red lines and strategically refuse to accept the nuclear threat as a political argument.

Petro Oleshchuk, political scientist, Ph.D, expert at the United Ukraine Think Tank