Ignoring US willingness to engage in nuclear talks, Russia doubles down on threats

By Global Watch | 2024-10-25

Russia earlier this month rejected a US statement suggesting that Washington is open to nuclear talks, turning instead to more threats.

In a statement October 13 congratulating Nobel Peace Prize winners, US President Joe Biden said that the United States is open to negotiations with Russia, China and North Korea "without preconditions to reduce the nuclear threat."

"There is no benefit to our nations or the world to forestall progress on reducing nuclear arsenals," he said, discussing the importance of the work toward building a safer, de-nuclearized world.

"Reducing the nuclear threat is important not despite the dangers of today's world but precisely because of them. These nuclear risks erode the norms and agreements we have worked collectively to put in place," he added.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, however, repudiated the United States' willingness to engage in talks, calling Biden's comments "a deception."

"The call to talk about strategic stability, about control over nuclear weapons without preconditions is a deception," Lavrov told the news outlet Argumenty i Fakty on October 20.

The statement means that Washington reserves the right to officially declare that its goal is to inflict a "strategic defeat" on Russia on the battlefield, he added.

Lavrov's comments are the latest in a string of steps by Russia to reject international calls for cooperation and instead heighten nuclear tensions and further entrench the war in Ukraine.

Russia has consistently refused to engage with the international community after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, instead labeling Ukraine's defensive maneuvers with support from NATO allies a "hybrid war."

NATO allies have provided Ukraine with humanitarian, financial and military aid, while Ukraine has fought to protect its sovereignty.

Russia's nuclear posture

Biden's remarks come in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin's increased nuclear saber-rattling and the recent alteration of Russia's nuclear doctrine.

At a Russian Security Council meeting on September 25, Putin announced that Russia was altering its nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold at which it threatens to use nuclear weapons.

Putin stipulated that any attack on Russia by a non-nuclear state with the participation of a nuclear state would be considered a joint attack.

Further, Putin announced that Moscow would be prepared to use nuclear weapons in response to conventional attacks if the attack posed a "critical threat" to sovereignty.

Putin floated Moscow's willingness to use nuclear weapons to respond to a massive air attack, a deliberately vague threat designed to deter aerial assault.

Moscow has been ramping up its nuclear posture in recent months, particularly after it failed to ward off Ukraine's successful August incursion into Kursk province and as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has petitioned Western partners for permission to strike deep inside Russia with Western-made weapons.

Earlier in the summer, Russia and its ally Belarus conducted a series of drills focused on training troops in tactical nuclear weapons -- a class of smaller warheads designed for use on battlefield targets.

Estimates place Russia's tactical nuclear weapon arsenal at between 1,000 and 2,000 weapons.