By Peter Dickinson, for UkraineAlert
US media personality Tucker Carlson was back in Moscow this week to interview Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and raise the nuclear alarm. This is Carlson’s second trip to the Russian capital in 2024 and comes following his headline-grabbing February interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. On that occasion, Carlson said his intention was to provide Putin with a platform to explain his reasons for invading Ukraine. This time, he appears intent highlighting the prospect of a direct clash between Russia and the United States. “We are closer to nuclear war than any time in history,” Carlson commented in a promotional video previewing the Lavrov interview.
From a Russian perspective, the timing of Carlson’s visit and his message of impending nuclear apocalypse are fortuitous, to say the least. In recent weeks, the United States has granted Ukraine the right to use US-supplied missiles against military targets inside Russia, despite months of increasingly direct nuclear warnings from Russian officials. Unfortunately for the Kremlin, it would seem that Putin’s nuclear bluff has been called once too often and his threats are now viewed as empty. In such circumstances, it is easy to understand why Moscow would welcome Carlson’s arrival.
While the details of Carlson’s latest Moscow mission are not yet known, many have been quick to claim that the main objective of his visit is to amplify Putin’s nuclear blackmail. “Every day, I watch Russian experts on state TV complaining that Americans are not afraid of Moscow’s nuclear threats and wondering what they can do to scare us, in order to dissuade Americans from supporting Ukraine,” commented prominent Kremlin media monitor Julia Davis. “That’s why Tucker is in Moscow.”
Nuclear intimidation has been central to Vladimir Putin’s strategy as he has sought to deter the West from coming to the aid of Ukraine following Russia’s February 2022 invasion. In his initial address announcing the decision to invade, Putin warned that any attempts at Western interference would be met with a nuclear response. Three days later, he underlined the message by placing Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert.
Putin has continued to engage in regular bouts of nuclear bluster ever since. In September 2022, he vowed to defend Russia’s recent conquests in Ukraine with the country’s vast nuclear arsenal. “I’m not bluffing,” he stated. In spring 2024, he ordered nuclear drills after French President Emmanuel Macron raised the prospect of deploying troops to Ukraine. More recently, Putin has unveiled a revised Russian nuclear doctrine and declared that any decision to allow Ukrainian long-range strikes inside Russia using Western weapons would mean that the West was “at war” with Russia.
For much of the current war, Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling has proved an effective tool, enabling him to limit the flow of military aid to Ukraine and impose restrictions on Kyiv’s ability to defend itself. However, there are now growing signs that Western leaders are no longer prepared to be intimidated. This is arguably long overdue. After all, ever since the early months of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine has consistently demonstrated a readiness to call Putin’s bluff and has repeatedly crossed Russian red lines without sparking a nuclear response.
In November 2022, Ukrainian forces liberated the key southern city of Kherson, just weeks after Putin had proclaimed it to be “forever Russian.” Despite this very personal humiliation, the Russian ruler did not reach for his nuclear briefcase. Instead, he ordered his defeated troops to retreat quietly across the Dnipro river. Likewise, when Ukraine challenged Putin’s grip on the occupied Crimean peninsula by sinking or disabling around one-third of the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet, he opted not to escalate and withdrew the bulk of his remaining warships to the safety of Russian ports.
The biggest single blow to Putin’s intimidation tactics came in August 2024, when Ukraine crossed the reddest of all red lines by invading Russia itself. Tellingly, Putin’s response to the first foreign occupation of Russian soil since World War II was to downplay the significance of Kyiv’s bold offensive. Rather than attempting to rally his fellow Russians against the invader, Putin dismissed Ukraine’s incursion as a mere “provocation” and ordered the Kremlin media to convince domestic audiences that the presence of Ukrainian troops inside Russia’s borders was the “new normal.”
In recent weeks, the Kremlin has sought to counter the crumbling credibility of its nuclear threats by demonstrating a willingness to escalate. Following the US decision to authorize long-range attacks inside Russia, Moscow launched an experimental nuclear-capable ballistic missile at a city in central Ukraine. However, the stunt failed to convince Western officials to rethink their position, with Ukrainian airstrikes on Russian targets continuing. Quoting four unnamed Kremlin officials, The Moscow Times called the launch a “propaganda operation” that was designed to “put the Americans and the British in their place and scare Berlin and other Europeans into submission.”
It remains to be seen whether Tucker Carlson’s timely intervention will lead to a revival of Western paralysis in the face of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Putin’s ability to intimidate the West with nuclear threats has been his greatest single success of the entire war, but this approach is clearly no longer producing the desired results. If Western leaders can now convince the Kremlin that they have finally overcome their fear of escalation, this could help persuade Putin to engage in meaningful negotiations for a sustainable peace deal. Crucially, it would also send a powerful signal to other would-be aggressors that nuclear saber-rattling doesn’t work and will be met with a resolute response.
By Peter Dickinson, for UkraineAlert
Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.
