Putin's Nuclear Trump Card to Win the War in Ukraine

My April 22nd article predicting Russia's annexation of all occupied Ukrainian territories and warning Ukrainian battlefield successes might provoke a Russian nuclear attack

Picture of nuclear self-propelled artillery firing a low-yield tactical nuclear artillery shell

(Author’s Note—This article was submitted to The National Interest on April 22, 2022. Unfortunately, TNI declined to publish it for unknown reasons perhaps because it showed how easily Russia could defeat Ukraine if Putin chose to. I am republishing it here because TNI published a very similarly themed article over five months later on October 2, 2022 entitled, “If Putin Nukes Ukraine, Russia Could Win the War.” which has been one of the top two most read articles on the site over the past six days. Despite being written five and a half months ago, I believe my article remains quite relevant given reports that Putin has relocated with his family to Russia’s vast underground nuclear command center at Yamantau Mountain as he makes the final decision whether to engage in a nuclear demonstration attack against Ukraine. I have listed my most relevant predictions in bold text. I published a shorter version of this article with what I had assumed might be objectionable content to TNI removed in “The Real War” newsletter on April 26th, 2022 after I was informed they had decided not to publish it.

Putin's Trump Card to Win the War in Ukraine

Original title and text as submitted to TNI for publication on April 22, 2022

The Russo-Ukrainian war is entering a more dangerous phase as the US and NATO continue to escalate their conflict against Russia with ever increasing economic sanctions and massive numbers of weapons to kill as many Russian troops and destroy as many Russian tanks and other military assets as possible. Having failed to achieve Russia’s original goal of regime change by capturing the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, Putin has fallen back to a much more limited objective of carving out a narrower buffer zone for Russia in eastern and southern Ukraine.

Western leaders continue to underestimate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unbroken determination to continue Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine until he retakes control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region, either by force or as part of a peace deal ending the war, even if it means he must escalate to the use of Russia’s most powerful cyber, Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) or even nuclear weapons in order to do so. Even worse, they have failed to provide him with a face-saving exit ramp which would enable him to withdraw Russian troops from most of the territory Russia has occupied as part of a negotiated peace agreement which recognizes its vital security interests, further increasing the chances the conflict will spiral up to the nuclear level.

A number of well-respected national security professionals and foreign policy experts including former Assistant Secretary of Defense Graham Allison, who previously served as a top national security advisor to President Biden, are beginning to sound the alarm that the Biden Administration’s continued pursuit of a strategy of undeclared economic and proxy war against Russia is serving to greatly increase the chances that Putin will resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons to win the war decisively. Meanwhile, the administration continues to edge ever closer to a direct military conflict with Russia by providing real-time tactical intelligence to the Ukrainian military enabling them to target and destroy Russian military assets, even reportedly helping them sink the Russian Black Sea flagship Moskva. While the official White House objectives are to help Ukraine defeat Russia and expel Russia’s military forces from its territory, President Biden has openly stated his goal is to collapse the Russian economy, overthrow Putin and have him tried for war crimes. Biden’s maximalist aims are not only entirely unachievable but may be viewed as an existential threat by President Putin who if threatened has an estimated 8,000 nuclear weapons at his disposal to ensure the war is ended on Russian terms.

On April 14, 2022, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency William Burns warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin might resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons if Russian military forces fall short of reaching their military objectives in Ukraine. A Russian escalation to the nuclear level would constitute a colossal failure of the dangerous and extremely risky US and NATO policy of giving Ukraine what essentially amounts to a ‘blank check’ of billions of dollars in Western military assistance to wage war with Russia in perpetuity, seemingly blind to the increasing dangers of Russian nuclear escalation. Here is a list of the most likely outcomes of the war in Ukraine. Ominously, three out of five of them involve a relatively high chance of Russian use of nuclear weapons.

1.                  ‘Frozen Conflict’—Unlike the Battle of Kyiv which Russia lost, the Battle of Donbass now being fought favors Russia because it is being fought in open fields rather than urban combat given that Russian units are better trained in maneuver warfare and it is being fought very close to the Russian border and adjoining friendly territory, shortening their supply lines. In addition, Russia has doubled the number of troops in the Donbass region with it being the only axis of advance rather than the three axes of advance the Russians were attempting previously while the military objective of capturing the remainder of the Donetsk region is much more limited and achievable. Ukrainian forces are much less well trained in maneuver warfare and much less able to replace their losses in men and material while their supply lines are being successfully interdicted by Russian airpower in the Donbass region. Under this scenario, Russian forces complete all of their military objectives in occupying the entire Donbass region, while capturing 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers. Putin then announces that the mission of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine has been accomplished and declares a cease fire before May 9th Victory Day celebrations and military parade in Russia. If Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were to refuse Putin’s subsequent peace offer to trade captured territory in southern and eastern Ukraine for its acceptance of Russia’s peace terms, summarized in my previous article “How Biden Can End the War in Ukraine”, Russia would likely engage in a ‘soft annexation’ (through the formation of one or more new Russian separatist republics) or perhaps even an actual annexation of all the territory in eastern and southern Ukraine they have conquered thus far leaving Ukraine as a nearly landlocked country with only a single major port in Odessa. This would be the second-best outcome from a U.S. national security perspective as there is a good chance it would end the risk of the outbreak of a Third World War between the U.S. and Russia. There is a 60% chance this outcome will materialize if Zelensky continues to refuse to negotiate a peace deal with Moscow.

2.                  Negotiated Peace—From the onset of the Russian invasion, Putin’s goal has been to get Ukrainian leaders to sign a peace deal realizing Russia’s minimum objectives, while allowing Zelensky to remain in power and Ukraine to join the European Union, thus permitting Russian troops to withdraw from all of the territory Ukraine controlled before the invasion with the exception of the Donbass. Following the signing of a peace deal, the U.S. would permanently suspend all weapons shipments to Ukraine and move to gradually normalize diplomatic and trade relations with Russia while refocusing U.S. forces to deter looming Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region  This option would likely be the best outcome for the U.S. and Ukraine due to the fact that it has the greatest chance of permanently resolving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It would serve to restore Ukraine’s status as a buffer state between Russia and NATO for the first time since the Western-backed coup against democratically elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, thus providing Russia with the security it has been seeking against the threat of further NATO expansion along its borders. Continued Ukrainian independence would be assured, and World War III between Russia and NATO would be averted. U.S. and even E.U. leaders have been pressuring Zelensky to pursue more maximalist objectives and insist on nothing less than a Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory, including the Crimea, causing him to withdraw his offer to recognize the independence of the Donbass. Accordingly, the chances of a negotiated peace deal now seem increasingly unlikely absent a Russian military victory. However, given that a hypothetical Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons, outlined below, would almost certainly be followed by some kind of negotiated peace agreement, even one heavily weighted in Russia’s favor, the overall chance of some kind of peace agreement being signed is probably around 65%.

3.                  Protracted Stalemate—There is a chance that if Ukraine were to heavily reinforce the western portion of Donetsk region that they still control, they might be successful in blunting repeated Russian offensives to capture it, exacting thousands if not tens of thousands more Russian casualties and fighting the Russians to a costly and prolonged stalemate lasting a few to several months, preventing Russian forces from capturing it. If that to occur, rather than accept failure in Russia’s special combat mission to “liberate” the Donbass republics from Ukrainian control, there is a very good chance that Putin would calculate that he needed to escalate to the tactical nuclear level in order in order to cut Russia’s military losses and end the war on Russian terms. I assess there is a 35% chance of this happening.

4.                  Ukraine Retakes the Donbass—This is the outcome the Biden administration and his liberal internationalist and neoconservative allies in Congress seem to be hoping for. Aided by increased US and NATO arms shipments including hundreds of T-72 main battle tanks, S-300 air defense systems and perhaps even MIG-29 fighters, Ukrainian counteroffensives are able to retake control of most of the Donbass region over the next year, threatening to expel Russian forces from the Donbass entirely. Russian forces suffer tens of thousands more casualties while the Ukrainians succeed in retaking the port city of Mariupol breaking the land bridge connecting Crimea to the rest of Russia. How would Putin likely react to such unprecedented Russian military reverses with a NATO backed Ukraine potentially on the verge of invading Crimea, which is part of Russia? The answer is not in serious doubt. With Russian forces facing a humiliating defeat, Putin would almost undoubtedly employ Russia’s new military doctrine to “escalate in order to de-escalate” authorizing the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This is the most likely outcome if Ukrainian military forces are ‘victorious’ over Russia on the battlefield. Needless to say, the predictably disastrous consequences of such a Ukrainian military ‘victory’ on the battlefield represent an outcome no U.S. policymaker should want to see materialize. There is probably a 5% chance that this outcome is realized.

5.                  World War Three—Under increasing pressure to do more to fight Russia following Ukrainian claims of Russian genocide against Ukrainian civilians, President Biden agrees to support sending NATO peacekeepers and/or agrees to the establishment of a no-fly zone in western Ukraine leading to a direct conflict and “shooting war” between the US and its NATO allies and the Russian Federation, sparking the outbreak of World War III. Russia would most likely respond by using tactical nuclear weapons against U.S. forces in Eastern Europe, killing tens of thousands of US and NATO troops to “escalate to de-escalate” in accordance with Russia’s new military doctrine or perhaps even using super-EMP weapons against us. Dr. Peter Pry has written that a Russian super-EMP weapon detonated over NATO headquarters could shut down all electrical power and food and water distribution services in western and central Europe causing tens of millions of Europeans to starve while a super EMP attack on the U.S. could cause over two-hundred million Americans to die within twelve months according to a report by the Congressional EMP Commission. If the U.S. were to respond by using nuclear weapons against Russia or Russian military forces, Russia would likely retaliate by staging a decapitation and limited counterforce nuclear first strike on the U.S. leading to the collapse of the U.S. government and essential services. As this scenario is entirely dependent on whether the U.S. and NATO send troops and pilots to fight Russia in Ukraine, this apocalyptic outcome would only occur if the decision was made to do so but it is important  for U.S. policymakers to understand that the stakes of our escalation spiral against Russia in Ukraine could not be any higher.

Reviewing these possible outcomes of the war, the bottom line is, contrary to what many U.S. policymakers believe, the chances of Ukraine defeating Russia are extremely remote. Russia’s use of tactical nuclear weapons could very well end up being Putin's trump card that he could use to enable Russia to achieve an overwhelming military victory, force Ukraine into an unconditional surrender and compel the replacement of the Zelensky government with one more acceptable to Moscow. Such a victory would likely restore Russian prestige to Cold War levels and might enable Russia to use nuclear blackmail to pressure the other former Soviet republics, to accept a Russian sphere of influence over them.

Furthermore, there is an increasing consensus among former senior U.S. defense and foreign policy officials that the Biden administration would not retaliate with nuclear weapons against Russia were they to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Rather it would most likely react by attempting to de-escalate the conflict in order to avoid a potential escalation to a full-scale nuclear exchange between the US and Russia that could lead to the entire destruction of the U.S. and NATO. This minimal chance of a U.S. nuclear response, combined with Russia’s overwhelming 25 to 1 advantage over the U.S. in terms of tactical nuclear weapons leaves Putin with few disincentives not to use them. Assuming the Biden administration does not directly involve U.S. military forces in Ukraine, the overall chances of the war escalating to the nuclear level are likely between 35-40%.

Paradoxically, the longer the Biden administration succeeds in prolonging the war in Ukraine and the more it is able to help the Ukraine Armed Forces achieve tactical victories on the battlefield, the higher the chances Putin will use nuclear weapons and the worse the outcome will be, not just for Ukraine, but for the U.S. and NATO as well. This sobering realization should prompt the Biden administration to rethink the wisdom of continuing its dangerous and extremely risky strategy of giving Ukraine a ‘blank check’ of  massive U.S. arms shipments to continue fighting the war against Russia for as long as it takes to ‘defeat’ them. It should cause senior administration officials to consider ways to incentivize both Russia and Ukraine to seek a mutually acceptable, negotiated peace agreement to end to the war as quickly as possible to end the increasing risk that the war will escalate and spread to the US and NATO. Once peace has been achieved, the U.S. should proceed to normalize our diplomatic and trade relations with Russia and sign a mutual security agreement with them to try to neutralize their military alliance with Communist China. 

© David T. Pyne 2022

David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and Headquarters staff officer, who was in charge of armaments cooperation with the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas from 2000-2003, with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as Deputy Director of National Operations for the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and is a contributor to Dr. Peter Pry’s book “Blackout Warfare” as well as the upcoming book “Will America Be Protected?” which is due to be released later this year. He also serves as the Editor of “The Real War” newsletter at dpyne.substack.com. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.