Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a revised nuclear doctrine declaring that a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack on his country.
Putin’s endorsement of the new nuclear deterrent policy comes on the 1,000th day after he sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
It follows U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russia with U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles.
The signing of the doctrine, which says that any massive aerial attack on Russia could trigger a nuclear response, reflects Putin’s readiness to threaten use of the country’s nuclear arsenal to force the West to back down as Moscow presses a slow-moving offensive in Ukraine.
That is and was the entire point of the nuclear armsrace back then, sometimes called the MAD (mutually assured destruction) doctrine.
Basically, you stock up enough to guarantee you can destroy the world and now no one can use it, without being, well, MAD.
But Putin might be mad enough to ignore that
The Russians always had plans drawn up to conduct a limited, theater-wide strike or a tactical strike with nukes. MAD was based on the idea no one would do that and that strategic weapons were the only realistic way to use nukes which is scary as hell.