US officials believe that the likelihood Russian President Vladimir Putin will use a tactical nuclear weapon in his struggling war in Ukraine is perhaps the highest it has been since Russia invaded in February — but is still not probable, multiple officials familiar with the latest intelligence tell CNN.
The intelligence community is closely watching for any signs that Putin’s calculus has changed after the Russian president was widely perceived last week to be escalating his past threats to use nuclear weapons.
The threat is certainly “elevated” compared to earlier in the year, according to multiple sources. The US in recent months has been privately warning Russia not to take such a catastrophic step.
But so far, there are no signs that Russia is imminently planning their use and the “general assessment hasn’t changed,” one source familiar with the intelligence said.
Several US defense officials, who also said they see no indication at this time of Russia moving nuclear weapons around, said they believe it’s likely the US could detect movement even of smaller tactical warheads.
Officials have long believed that Putin would only turn to a nuclear weapon if there was a threat to his own position, or if he perceived an existential threat to Russia itself – which he may consider a loss in Ukraine to be.
Some Russian military analysts believe that Putin’s mobilization order may in fact decrease the short-term risk he will turn to a battlefield nuke, because it will prolong his ability to sustain the conventional war.
The general sense inside the US government that the threat is higher than before is based primarily on Putin’s rhetoric and analysis of his mindset amid Russian losses in Ukraine, rather than any hard intelligence that Russia is more seriously weighing the nuclear option, according to two sources familiar with the intelligence.
