President Vladimir Putin, who rules the world’s biggest nuclear power, has repeatedly cautioned the West that any attack on Russia could provoke a nuclear response.
Will Putin use nuclear weapons; how many such weapons does he command?
Much depends on how Putin perceives the threat to the Russian state and his rule.
No Russian official has called for a strategic nuclear weapons strike with the weapons that were designed to destroy cities in the United States, Russia, Europe and Asia.
Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia’s Chechnya region, said Moscow should consider using a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
Tactical nuclear weapons are essentially nuclear weapons used on the battlefield for a “tactical” purpose and are much less powerful than the big bombs that would be needed to destroy large cities such as Moscow, Washington, or London.
Such weapons can be dropped from planes, fired on missiles from the ground, ships or submarines, or detonated by ground forces.
Although Russia has specialized nuclear forces trained to fight in such an apocalyptic battlefield, it is unclear how its army of regular troops, mercenaries, drafted reservists and local militias would cope.
Russia is the world’s biggest nuclear power based on the number of nuclear warheads: it has 5,977 warheads while the United States has 5,428, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Russia has 1,458 strategic nuclear warheads deployed – or ready to fire – and the United States has 1,389 deployed, according to the latest publicly declared data. These warheads are on intercontinental ballistic missiles, ballistic missiles on submarines and strategic bombers.
When it comes to tactical nuclear weapons, Russia has about 10 times the number the United States has.
