This year has seen President Vladimir Putin repeatedly brandish the nuclear sword, reminding everyone that Russia has the world’s largest atomic arsenalto try to deter the West from ramping up support for Ukraine.
He ordered his military to hold drills involving battlefield nuclear weapons with ally Belarus.
He announced Russia will start producing ground-based intermediate range missiles that were outlawed by a now-defunct U.S.-Soviet treaty in 1987.
And last month, he lowered the threshold for unleashing his arsenal by revising the country’s nuclear doctrine.
Putin is relying on those thousands of warheads and hundreds of missiles as an enormous doomsday machine to offset NATO's massive edge in conventional weapons to discourage what he sees as threats to Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
A look at Russia's atomic arsenal and the issues surrounding it:
Russia's strategic weapons
The Federation of American Scientists estimated this year that Russia has an inventory totaling 5,580 deployed and non-deployed nuclear warheads, while the U.S. has 5,044. Together, that’s about 88% of the world’s nuclear weapons.
Most of these are strategic, or intercontinental-range weapons. Like the U.S., Russia has a nuclear triad of ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, long-range bombers and ICBM-armed submarines.
Since Putin came to power in 2000, the Kremlin has worked to upgrade the Soviet-built components of the triad, deploying hundreds of new land-based missiles, commissioning new nuclear submarines and modernizing nuclear-capable bombers. Russia's effort to revamp its nuclear forces has helped prompt the U.S. to launch a costly modernization of its arsenal.
Russia has reequipped its land-based strategic missile forces with mobile Yars ICBMs and recently began deploying the heavy, silo-based Sarmat ICBMs — designated “Satan II” missiles in the West — to gradually replace about 40 Soviet-built R-36M missiles. Sarmat has had only one known successful test, and reportedly suffered a massive explosion during an abortive test last month.
The navy commissioned seven new Borei-class atomic-powered submarines, each with 16 Bulava nuclear-tipped missiles, and plans to build five more. They are intended to form the core of the triad’s naval component alongside a few Soviet-era nuclear subs still operating.
Russia still relies on Soviet-built Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Moscow has restarted production of the supersonic Tu-160 that was halted after the 1991 Soviet collapse, aiming to build several dozen modernized aircraft with new engines and avionics.
Russia's non-strategic nuclear weapons
The U.S. estimates that Russia has between 1,000 and 2,000 non-strategic, or tactical, nuclear weapons intended for use on the battlefield that typically are far less powerful than the strategic warheads capable of destroying entire cities.
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