Russia's threat to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine

This story seems not to have gotten any coverage in Western media, whether Mainstream or Alt, though its importance can hardly be overstated: from playing the wimp for the past 4 years Putin & Co. are now threatening an escalation in the war that opens the Pandora’s box on use of nuclear arms against a non-nuclear nation and brings us far along on the path to WWIII. This development is precisely what Paul Craig Roberts has been warning us about for the past two or three years. It is a point on which I joined him a year ago: namely that the man who is held up by his fans in the West as the only adult in the room due to his turning the other cheek to each new Western provocation, has so damaged Russia’s perceived deterrence that under pressure from the elites and public or after he is forced from office by less tender and civilized peers, Russia goes rogue.

The alarm should have sounded yesterday when Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov said publicly that the war has reached a turning point and that attacks on Russia may bring a nuclear response. To be sure, he could have had in mind the threats of Baltic States to attack Kaliningrad which have proliferated in recent days. But most likely he was speaking about the almost daily Ukrainian drone strikes, the most brazen of which was yesterday when a Ukrainian drone struck an oil facility in the port of Petersburg, on Vasilievsky Island, sending plumes of black smoke high into the air on the day of the opening of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, when all of Russia was aware of this highly significant event.

Let us remember that Ryabkov is the hard -liner who delivered the ultimatum to the US and NATO in December 2021 that they move back to the positions occupied by NATO before its rapid expansion into former Warsaw Pact countries beginning under Bill Clinton in 1997. The West’s refusal to negotiate over a redrawing of European security architecture as Moscow was now demanding, was the immediate cause of Putin’s unleashing his Special Military Operation invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Then again we heard from Ryabkov in the autumn of 2025 when he declared that the spirit of the Anchorage summit in August of that year had dissipated and diplomacy was fruitless. Ryabkov was immediately rebuked for this by his boss, Sergei Lavrov, but in a very few weeks Lavrov himself came to the same conclusion.

Ryabkov’s remark was the key subject of discussion last night on Russia’s two leading talk shows, Evening with Vladimir Solovyov and The Great Game evening edition hosted by Dmitry Simes. The latter was the more interesting because of the nuanced distinctions between the host and his panelists. The panelists agreed with Ryabkov that the situation in the war has reached a level of damage to Russian security and public fury over the daily atrocities against the civilian population wrought by Ukrainian drones that it was time to drop any and all restrictions on use of force, and to strike Ukraine with all of Russia’s might, including ‘special arms,’ meaning nuclear weapons. For his part, Simes this time spoke for Putin, saying that this escalation must be considered but that no rash decisions should be taken given the possible consequences.

The point is clear: the aggressive military and foreign policy that political commentator Sergei Karaganov has been promoting for more than 2 years, a position that is essentially very critical of Putin’s holding back, now is being actively discussed in public and may become official Russian policy in a matter of days if Zelensky persists in his baiting Moscow with daily murders of Russian civilians by drones and highly visible drone attacks on essential Russian infrastructure.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026