Since Moscow launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kyiv has complained that it is defending itself with one arm tied behind its back in the face of Russia’s full might.
While Western partners like the United States provided billions of dollars in weapons, Ukraine was prevented from using them to strike deep into Russian territory, where Moscow’s war machine largely sat out of harm’s way.
That all changed on November 19, the 1,000th day of the war, when Moscow claimed Ukraine had fired U.S.-made longer-range missiles inside its territory, just after the White House reportedly granted Kyiv the green light.
The administration of outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden then announced another reversal to a longstanding policy, saying on November 23 that it would provide Kyiv with antipersonnel mines to help it blunt advancing Russian forces on Ukrainian territory.
Russia, meanwhile, made changes to its own policies, with President Vladimir Putin signing into law a revised nuclear doctrine that significantly lowers the threshold for his country to use the nuclear option to counter even a conventional attack by an adversary.
Uncomfortable Questions
The successive changes to the battlefield rules, which Moscow had already altered with the recent addition of thousands of North Korean troops to buttress its own forces in southwestern Russia, now have pundits asking a slew of questions:
Why is this happening now, just two months before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has claimed he can quickly end the war, returns to the White House?
Are Biden, or Putin — or both — suddenly taking unnecessary and reckless risks?
Can Washington’s decisions save Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s “victory plan,” which called for longer strike capabilities to hit the heart of Russia’s war machine?
And the biggest question, the one that arguably prevented Washington from granting Zelenskiy the permission he sought in the first place: Are we headed for World War III between nuclear superpowers?
Experts are at odds over who might be the bigger risk-taker.
“The current situation offers Putin a significant temptation to escalate,” Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of R.Politik, wrote on X in reference to Russia’s potential to use nukes. “With Trump not yet in office, such a move would not interfere with any immediate peace initiatives but could instead reinforce Trump’s argument for direct dialogue with Putin.”
Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian diplomat and arms-control negotiator now with the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation, countered on X by saying, “I think, rather, Biden has suddenly displayed [a] big appetite for risk-taking after 2.5 years of being risk-averse.”
Now, he added, “Putin may feel forced to react or Trump will take him to the cleaners.”
Too Little, Too Late?
But when asked by RFE/RL whether the recent moves by Moscow and Washington have increased the risk of a nuclear escalation, Keir Giles, an expert on the geopolitical conflict between the West and Russia, said “not at all.”
Giles, author of a new book called Who Will Defend Europe?, said the U.S. decision to grant Kyiv greater strike capabilities came “long after it would have had the maximum impact” and “is really not something about which Russia is going to be genuinely, legitimately concerned.”
Moscow “will still indulge in the performative theatrics to do with the nuclear doctrine, getting enormous value out of the changes,” Giles said. “They are milking this for all it is worth, because they get a very gratifying reaction abroad.”
Ukraine, meanwhile, faces Russian and North Korean troops intent on retaking territory in Russia’s southwestern Kursk region. The Ukrainian military’s territorial gains within Russia came as the result of a surprise incursion in August that Zelenskiy said would give Kyiv more leverage in future negotiations.
Kyiv is also trying to stave off a massive assault by Russian troops in Ukraine’s east that some observers say is aimed at seizing full control of the four regions of Ukraine that Moscow has illegally annexed when and if peace talks do take place.
But at the moment, Giles said, “there is no incentive for either Russia or Ukraine to enter negotiations.”
“Ukraine knows that this is likely to be far more disastrous for them than fighting on, and Russia knows that it can extract far more from Ukraine than if they freeze the conflict at the present moment,” he said.
Most observers agree that Ukraine’s longer-range U.S. missiles, which are in short supply, are not going to seriously alter the course of the war in and of themselves.
Jack Watling, senior research fellow at the Britain-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), wrote that the developments “are less about the damage” the U.S. ATACMS missiles, or Army Tactical Missile System, can inflict.
It is “more about what they might enable, and whether their provision is a catalyst for others like Germany to provide similar kinds of support,” he said.
Take A Deep Breath
As for the prospect of Russian retaliation for Ukraine using the U.S.-supplied missiles, Watling wrote that “it certainly will not” lead to a nuclear response.
“The reality is that Russia can escalate in a range of ways to impose costs on the West, from undersea sabotage to the employment of proxies to harass trade,” Watling wrote.
Sam Greene, a professor at the Russia Institute at King’s College London, called for “deep breaths, everyone.”
“The fact that Russia published a revised nuclear doctrine on the same day that Ukraine first fired ATACMs across the border is the result of careful escalation management by both sides,” Greene wrote on X on November 19. “We may eventually get to WWIII, but probably not tonight.”
