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Russian President Vladimir Putin loves nuclear saber rattling: On the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin leader led the rehearsal of a nuclear strike, and he has continued his not-so-veiled nuclear threats ever since, keeping U.S. officials on their toes.

This week, Putin once again shocked the world of arms control with his revelation proposed changes to his country’s nuclear doctrine. At a meeting of his Security Council on Wednesday, the president said Russia would revise doctrine to potentially lower the hurdle to using nuclear weapons, adding that Moscow would consider an attack by a non-nuclear state involving or supported by a nuclear state as a “joint attack against the Russian Federation.”

A retaliatory nuclear strike, Putin continued, could be considered “as soon as we receive reliable information about a massive launch of air and space attack weapons and their crossing our state border.” I mean strategic and tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) , hypersonic and other aircraft.”

Simply put, Putin warned Washington and other supporters of Ukraine. The doctrinal revision comes as Ukraine (a non-nuclear weapon state since it gave up its claims to nuclear weapons following the collapse of the USSR) is pushing the United States for long-range weapons that would allow it to strike deeper into Russia.

The doctrine revision is clearly intended to give Western politicians pause as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky unveils his “victory plan” to the Biden administration. By brandishing the big bar of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, Putin suggests that the potential cost of supplying these weapons to Ukraine may be too high for the West.

So does Putin’s statement bring the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight? Wednesday’s announcement sparked heated debate online, with arms control experts trying to parse Putin’s language about thresholds for nuclear retaliation.

Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russian nuclear forces, wrote in a thread

“In the current version of Russian nuclear doctrine, there is no difference between aggression by a nuclear state and a non-nuclear state,” he wrote. “All you need is aggression that threatens the existence of the state.”

Podvig referred to an earlier Russian assurance that Moscow would not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states, with one exception: if that state acts “in conjunction or alliance with a nuclear-weapon state.”

Russia’s new red lines may be hard to see, but that may be beside the point.

“The language is designed for the very specific situation we currently find ourselves in,” Podvig wrote. “We know what these nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states are.”

Mariana Budjeryn, a researcher at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, suggested that the red lines may exist primarily in Putin’s head.

“There are two notable departures from the previous 2020 Russian military doctrine,” she wrote on weakened to extreme threats to state sovereignty. What does that mean? Who defines what constitutes these threats? Probably, Mr. Putin. Conventional aggression is further specified and also includes a massive air and space attack. Who defines what is “massive” or massive enough? Probably, Mr. Putin.”

The bottom line for changes to military doctrine, Budjeryn added, “are smaller than meets the eye, but give the Russian leadership more room for interpretation to define the circumstances of nuclear use.”

Putin’s very public move also underscores the performative nature of nuclear deterrence.

“The spectacle here is key: the act of communicating ‘Our doctrine is changing’ now captures the world’s attention, with the implicit message: You should be worried,” Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, the director of the Norwegian Intelligence School, wrote Academic The research focuses on Russian nuclear strategy, on X. “The content of Putin’s speech is less spectacular; A number of topics are covered in more detail than before, but the granularity of the nuclear thresholds remains – as intended – as fuzzy as before.”

It is also unclear what the actual revised doctrine might look like, Ven Bruusgaard added.

“The crucial question is: what now? Will we see a document, will it contain more than what Putin said? Is this a trial balloon or is this nonsense? If yes; It is strange that there have been so few changes if one were to update the doctrine.”

Ultimately, it is also important to remember that Ukraine has already made incursions deep into Russian territory, including drone strikes on the Russian capital and a recent attack on a Russian ammunition depot. And the results of Zelensky’s visit to the US may soon show us whether anyone in Washington is listening to Putin’s nuclear talks.