DEEP DIVE — Does Vladimir Putin have actual “red lines” for the West when it comes to the war in Ukraine? And if so, what will he do if they are crossed? These are crucial questions for Ukraine and its supporters, and a growing chorus of policymakers and analysts believe the West has been getting the answers wrong.
Since the early days of the war, Putin has brandished the threat of using Russia’s nuclear weapons should the West “interfere” with his “special military operation” in Ukraine. Time and again, the West has either delayed shipment of weapons or imposed restrictions on their use because of fears that doing otherwise would cross a Kremlin red line, and lead to a dangerous escalation.
“Putin has established what I like to call red-line dominance,” Ralph Goff, a former CIA Chief of Operations for Europe and Eurasia, said at the Cipher Brief’s Threat Conference this month. “We've kind of painted ourselves into a corner because we've been believing the threats from this guy about nuclear warfare. He rattles the nuclear saber whenever the Ukrainians cross one of his red lines, but then he does nothing.”
“The Ukrainians have crossed every red line that the Russians have put down,” Former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus told The Cipher Brief. “I think the threat has proven to be hollow, and is still hollow.”
Nearly three years into the war, the question of the Kremlin’s red lines is critical, as Russia makes slow but steady gains in the east, Ukrainians fear the consequences for U.S. aid should Donald Trump win the November election, and – in the latest news to worry Kyiv – as North Korea sends troops to train in Russia for possible deployment in the war.
If the red lines are taken seriously, future Ukraine aid may be imperiled and the restrictions on its use of long-range weapons will likely stay in place. If they are deemed to be nothing more than a bluff, and an effort to frighten the West, then the equation changes, and the case for more robust and aggressive policies is far easier to make.
At an international conference in Kyiv last month, several speakers made that case.
Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of the German parliament, complained that American and German policymakers “have formulated and stipulated so many red lines, and lines of fear, that we could have already woven a red carpet for Russia.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski argued that the red lines were a ploy, and that Putin had already used all the weapons that he was willing to employ.
"I don’t think there is anything that Putin is not doing already that he will do in response to what we do,” Sikorski said. “I would be very surprised if he was mad enough to start a war with NATO. And his threats of using nuclear weapons have also, so far, been hollow."
Red lines drawn – and crossed
Putin began drawing his Ukraine red lines in the first hours of the February 2022 invasion, when he warned against “those who may be tempted to interfere from the outside.”
Any countries that might “hinder us, and…create threats for our country,” the Russian leader said, would suffer “such consequences that you have never experienced in your history.” If that message wasn’t clear enough, less than one week into the war Putin ordered his nuclear forces to “a special regime of combat duty.”
Policymakers in the U.S. and Europe scrambled to divine what might constitute “interference” in Putin’s mind, and their concern was in play as West considered delivery to Ukraine of a series of military aid packages — shipments of Javelin anti-tank weapons, HIMARS rocket launchers, Patriot Missile systems, F-16 fighter jets and long-range ATACMS missiles. In each case, there was deliberation and delay; in the case of the ATACMS, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that sending those weapons could lead to a “third world war,” because they would give Ukraine the ability to strike targets inside Russia.
Ultimately, every one of these systems was given to the Ukrainians. The red lines were crossed. And there was no retaliation from Russia.
All those delays have deeply frustrated Ukrainian political leaders and military commanders. Meanwhile, the threats have persisted. Putin’s surrogates have repeatedly urged the Kremlin to use its nuclear arsenal; perhaps most notably, the former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has taken to his social media accounts to warn the West of “nuclear apocalypse” should it keep sending sophisticated weapons systems to Kyiv. Occasionally the Russian threats have been paired with action: the transfer of nuclear weapons to Belarus, and drills for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
"What we have seen is a pattern of reckless Russian nuclear rhetoric and messaging,” the outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said last month. “Every time we have stepped up our support with new types of weapons - battle tanks, long-range fires or F-16s - the Russians have tried to prevent us. They have not succeeded.”
If Kursk wasn’t a red line, what is?
Among Putin’s many warnings, there was this one, issued in September 2022: “If Russia feels its territorial integrity is threatened, we will use all defense methods at our disposal, and this is not a bluff.”
Two years later, Ukrainian forces stormed across the Russian frontier and into the Kursk region. They captured hundreds of Russian soldiers and took nearly 400 square miles of territory, in the first military invasion of Russia since World War II. The attack may have seemed the reddest of red lines, but the immediate Russian response was negligible – almost as surprising to some observers as the lightning raid itself.
To return to Putin’s warning, certainly the “territorial integrity” of Russia had been threatened by the Kursk attack; equally clear, the Kremlin had not used “all defense methods” in response. Instead, the Russian leader chose to play down the incursion, presumably to assuage any critics or concerns on the home front. It was only several weeks later that Russia sent significant forces to Kursk to fight back.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seized on the Kremlin response – or lack thereof – to question whether any of Putin’s red lines were real.
“We are now witnessing a significant ideological shift,” Zelensky said, “namely, the whole naive, illusory concept of so-called ‘red lines’.” He added that he had chosen not to inform his Western allies about the operation ahead of time, assuming that he would have been told “it would cross the strictest of all the red lines that Russia has.”
The latest red line – and latest nuclear threat
The current Russian red line, and reluctance to cross it, involves the rules forbidding Ukraine from using Western long-range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory. And as calls have grown from many quarters for the lifting of those restrictions, Putin has issued new threats, and a new nuclear doctrine to go with them.
The Russian leader said last month that he would view a drop in the restrictions as the “direct participation” of NATO in the war, since Ukraine would have to use data from Western satellites to conduct the missile launches into Russian territory. “It would substantially change the very essence, the nature of the conflict,” Putin warned. “This will mean that Nato countries, the USA and European states, are fighting with Russia.”
The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported the warning under the headline, “Vladimir Putin draws his red line.”
Two weeks later, Russia announced it had revised its nuclear doctrine. The key change: Moscow would now consider any assault on Russian territory supported by another nation (in other words, a NATO nation providing weapons to Ukraine) to be a joint attack – and that nuclear weapons may be used in response. The change appeared to be a new use of the nuclear threat, aimed at stoking U.S. fears that giving Ukraine permission to use long-range weapons against Russia would invite a NATO-Russia war. Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said the change in the nuclear doctrine was “connected with the escalation course of Western adversaries.”
For the leading voices in the universe of Russian propaganda, the change and the new warnings were overdue, and part of an effort to “restore the fear” in the West, as one advisor to the Kremlin put it. Igor Korotchenko, a military analyst and a regular on Russian state television, said the changes were needed because the West had ignored prior warnings against escalation.
"We see that Western adversaries no longer respect any 'red lines', believing that any acts to arm Ukraine and Western-assisted strikes against facilities deep inside Russian territory will not be met with nuclear escalation," Korotchenko told the daily Izvestia newspaper.
Writing on his Telegram channel, Vladimir Avatkov, a foreign policy advisor to the Kremlin, said that "this is an attempt to not just warn [the West], but to give them back the fear that they have completely lost. And perhaps even some strategic thinking."
The red lines that remain
There are certain Kremlin red lines that the U.S. and its allies have never seriously considered crossing: A direct U.S-NATO strike against Russia; imposing a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would compel the alliance to shoot down Russian aircraft or drones over Ukrainian territory; or deploying Western soldiers to Ukraine. (President Joe Biden once warned that the latter step could lead to “World War III.”)
Some experts and policymakers still worry about taking Putin’s threats lightly. Dave Pitts, a Cipher Brief expert and former Assistant Director of CIA for South and Central Asia said that while the Kremlin’s threats have lost some of their credibility, “right now I think nobody a hundred percent dismisses those threats that are coming from Putin, or some of his red lines.”
As Pentagon Deputy Spokesperson Sabrina Singh put it in an August briefing, “just because Russia hasn’t responded to something doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t in the future.”
None of this has changed the views of those who believe the West must stop holding its Ukraine policy hostage to Putin’s warnings.
“Stop the endless debate on these issues, and hand-wringing about this nuclear rattling that has gone on,” Gen. Petraeus said at the recent Cipher Brief Threat Conference. And in a separate interview with The Cipher Brief, he said the nuclear threat still rings hollow.
“I don't think they're going to escalate to tactical nuclear weapons, nor do I think they would be as insane as to pick a fight with a NATO country,” Gen. Petraeus said. He added that China and India had issued direct warnings to Russia that any use of nuclear weapons would mean an end to support from those countries.
Other prominent American voices agree.
“I think there’s an excessive fear among a lot of leaders, including here in Washington, that somehow if we do certain things, Russia will use a nuclear weapon, that they will escalate. I think there’s about zero chance Russia’s going to use a nuclear weapon,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told The Cipher Brief in July.
Putin’s greatest weapon against the West, Gen. Hodges said, is the “scare tactic” that comes with the nuclear arsenal.
“There’s no benefit if they use a nuclear weapon. All of their benefit from their nukes comes from the fact that they see we are so scared that they might use one, that we deter ourselves.”
Doug Lute, a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, warned at the Cipher Brief conference that bending to Putin’s nuclear threat carried risks beyond the Ukraine war – namely, that other nations would now ne more likely to seek nuclear weapons as a lever to hold against their enemies.
“Another message that some may take away from a potential Putin win is that we too need nuclear weapons,” Lute said. “And this connects to the red-line dominance. If people observe this pattern of a nuclear power threatening and threatening, playing us against his red lines, they may easily conclude that look, the magic sauce here is to just acquire nuclear weapons and we too can then dominate. So beware nuclear proliferation taking off in the wake of a Russian win.”
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