Behind Russia's Nuclear Posturing

In a July interview with the Russian magazine The International Affairs, a senior Russian diplomat, Sergei Ryabkov, argued that in light of Russia’s war in Ukraine, “nuclear deterrence in its traditional sense is not fully working.” His words echoed Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s earlier rhetoric on the possibility of conceptual changes to the country’s nuclear doctrine that could lower the threshold for the use of a small, low-yield device on the battlefield. On August 27, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed…