Russia’s grinding war in Ukraine shows the impotence of nuclear weapons

Why haven’t Ukraine’s drone and missile attacks on Russia triggered Moscow’s use of tactical nuclear weapons, as it has threatened? When Russia is attacked time and again, one wonders what purpose it serves to have the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

The Ukraine war is at a stalemate. Though roughly 90 per cent of the territory in East Donbas is under Russian control, its ground advances have slowed to less than 100 metres a day, according to a July 1 report by the Centre for Strategic International Studies.

Could Russia use tactical nuclear weapons as a game-changer? The answer is probably no. Historically, nuclear weapons have proven largely ineffective in conflicts between a nuclear power and a non-nuclear adversary. Despite having a nuclear arsenal, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union prevailed in their wars in Afghanistan.

The only wartime use of nuclear weapons, by the US against Japan in 1945, is no exception. The US could have secured Japan’s surrender through conventional means; the stated justification of reducing Allied casualties was partly a pretext – a core unstated objective was to signal overwhelming military strength to the rising Soviet Union.

Despite Ukraine’s drone strikes targeting Moscow, repeated attacks across Crimea and damage to major Russian refineries, Russia has so far refrained from crossing the nuclear threshold, and for good reason.

A tactical nuclear detonation in Donbas, which lies on Russia’s western border, would create radioactive fallout that risks drifting back into Russian territory. Also, given that Moscow claims the four eastern Ukrainian oblasts as Russian territory, it makes no sense for it to bomb what it considers sovereign soil.