According to a Reuters report on December 12, Russia's Vladimir Putin recently announced his candidacy for Russia, and if nothing happens, Putin may be in power for another six years. But the prospect of its coming to power could mean that nuclear tensions with the United States will not ease, as time is running out for the last remaining treaty to limit the number of warheads that can be deployed on both sides.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin has claimed that Russia has the world's most advanced nuclear weapons and said it could eliminate any aggressor.
On December 11, three days after announcing that he would run for re-election in March 2024, Putin presided over a flag-raising ceremony for the launch of two new submarines, including the USS Alexander III, which tested a nuclear-capable Bulava ICBM last month.
He denied that Moscow was "waving" nuclear ** and resisted calls for a more aggressive doctrine of the nuclear ** it might use, but he had put his nuclear forces on high alert and announced the deployment of tactical nuclear missiles in his neighbor and ally Belarus.
In November, Putin signed a law revoking Russia's ratification of a global treaty banning nuclear tests, though Moscow said it would not re-conduct nuclear tests unless the United States did so, which would be the first time it had claimed to conduct a nuclear test since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Some international security analysts say that as Putin's regular forces struggle in Ukraine, and as Western countries cut off their dependence on Russian energy, weakening his ability to exert pressure by cutting off oil and gas, nuclear ** has taken on greater importance in Putin's thinking and rhetoric.
Analysts say the Kremlin leader has no interest in discussing nuclear risk reduction with Washington, since Moscow believes that it is the fear that the Western international community may resort to nuclear ** that has prevented the United States and its allies from entering the war directly on the side of Ukraine.
Nikolai Sokov, a senior researcher at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation and a diplomat from the former Soviet Union and Russia, said: "If you continue to play the nuclear card against the United States and NATO, how can you reduce the risk?".”
By the start of Putin's expected new term in May, there are less than two years left before the New START Treaty expires on February 4, 2026. The treaty limits the strategic nuclear warheads and bombs of both Russia and the United States to 1,550.
The agreement was due to expire in 2021, but was hastily extended for five years after the inauguration of Joe Biden in the United States at the beginning of that year.
Putin suspended Russia's participation in the New START Treaty this year, and Russia's deputy minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said last month that Moscow would not resume dialogue unless the United States abandoned what he called a "fundamentally hostile line" toward Russia.
Putin often speaks of the potential of Russia's new ** systems, such as the "Sarmat" ICBM and the "Brevestnik" cruise missile. Ryabkov said that Washington is wrong if it thinks it can win the kind of press arms race against Russia that Ronald Reagan conducted in the 1980s.
Nigel Gould Davies of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London said: "Russia knows that a new uncontrolled nuclear arms race is something they cannot afford and no real capacity to sustain it." This is even more true now, as Russia has been weakened in most ways by the war against Ukraine. ”