Introduction
During his speech in the opening minutes of the Ukraine War, Putin addressed the Western countries:
No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history. No matter how the events unfold, we are ready. All the necessary decisions in this regard have been taken. I hope that my words will be heard.1
Many Western pundits, analysts, and potentially policymakers interpreted the statement as an insinuation that Russia would respond to Western interference in Ukraine with its nuclear arsenal. Shortly after this speech, Putin publicly placed Russia’s deterrent forces on alert,2 signaling that apprehensions in the Western capitals were in fact far from groundless. Putin’s implicit nuclear threat cast a long shadow over the Ukraine War, as it not only deterred Western powers from active troop deployments, either in the form of imposing no-fly zones or deploying tripwire forces,3 but also instilled reticence in them regarding the provision of much-needed military equipment to Ukrainian forces. For the first year of the war, the U.S. and its allies explicitly refused to provide so-called escalatory hardware, including Western-made tanks (Leopards/Abrams),4 long-range missiles (ATACMS),5 and fighter jets (F-16s).6 Even after they backpedaled from their refusals, they continued to maintain a strict policy that Western-supplied weapons could not be used to strike targets inside Russian territory, effectively providing a sanctuary for Russian logistics and airfields.7 As the war extends into its fifth year, Putin’s nuclear blackmail still echoes in Western capitals, where substantial assistance to Ukraine is believed to risk triggering World War III.8
