Putin’s nuclear blackmail has expired

For more than three years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has used nuclear threats as his go-to weapon against Western support for Ukraine. Battlefield setbacks? Cue the warnings about “red lines” and World War III.

And it worked. The Biden administration’s careful, incremental approach to military aid was partly shaped by fear of crossing Putin’s threshold.

But things have changed. Putin’s nuclear theater has not just failed to intimidate President Trump — it has backfired so badly that the Kremlin had to scramble and walk back its own threats. In fact, this may be the moment Putin’s nuclear blackmail finally hit its expiration date.

The pattern has been consistent since 2022. When Ukrainian forces routed Russian troops in Kharkiv and Kherson that fall, Moscow’s nuclear saber-rattling was so alarming that CIA Director Bill Burns later revealed there was “genuine risk” of tactical nuclear use. Each time the West considered supplying advanced weapons, Russia issued dire warnings, which the Biden administration took seriously.

Trump initially fell for the same playbook. For nine months, Putin convinced him that Russia’s victory was inevitable, while stringing him along in his peace negotiations theater. Vice President JD Vance explicitly warned against triggering World War III. Trump delayed major sanctions, genuinely believing restraint would bring peace.

But by October, the illusion had worn thin. A phone call with Putin on Oct. 16 ended with Trump announcing plans for a Budapest summit to explore a settlement. Days later, after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov delivered the same hardline ultimatum to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump pulled the plug. Days later, frustrated and determined to compel Putin to negotiate seriously, Trump imposed his first major sanctions on Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil.

Russia’s response? A dramatic pivot that appeared more desperate than strategic. With conventional diplomacy getting nowhere, Moscow went back to nuclear theater, but this time with an absurd twist.

First up: the Burevestnik, a nuclear-powered cruise missile, which Putin announced on Oct. 26-27. Then the messaging took an even stranger turn. Putin sent Kirill Dmitriev, his economic envoy, not part of a military apparatus, to Washington to brandish this “unique weapon.” Dmitriev showed up with chocolates featuring Putin quotes.

The response? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent openly ridiculed him on CBS News, calling Dmitriev “a Russian propagandist.” When American Cabinet officials are openly mocking Russian envoys on national television, you’ve lost more than just the argument; you’ve lost the psychological game entirely.

Western experts weren’t buying it. The Burevestnik is subsonic and riddled with technical problems; a 2019 test killed five Russian scientists. Trump’s comeback summed it up bluntly: “They know we have a nuclear submarine, the greatest in the world, right off their shores.” He’s talking about U.S. subs operating from Norway with missiles that could hit Moscow in five to seven minutes. The logic of developing such a system becomes dubious given the existing U.S. deterrent.

With the Burevestnik gambit failing, Putin doubled down. On Oct. 29, he rolled out the Poseidon torpedo, supposedly capable of creating 500-meter radioactive tsunamis that would devastate American coastal cities.

Technical experts dismiss it as implausible. Underwater nuclear blasts spread energy in all directions. To generate a towering, focused tsunami hundreds of meters high, as Russia claims Poseidon could, would require not just immense power, but geological conditions nuclear weapons can’t replicate. Physics just doesn’t support it.

And that’s when things unraveled. Trump misread what Russia was actually testing. The Poseidon and Burevestnik use nuclear-powered engines, not nuclear warheads. On Oct. 30, Trump declared he’d order the Pentagon to restart nuclear weapons testing, something we haven’t done since 1992.

The Kremlin’s strategy had backfired. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov scrambled to clarify that Russia’s tests were not of warheads but engines, an implicit admission that their posturing had provoked the wrong response. A tactic that once paralyzed Western decision-making was now triggering the very escalation it sought to prevent.

And this isn’t a one-off. Russia’s “wonder weapons” have a habit of flopping. Take the T-14 Armata tank, unveiled in 2015. Russia planned to build 2,300. They’ve made fewer than 20, and exactly zero have been deployed to Ukraine, even as they’ve lost over 4,000 tanks in combat. Or the RS-28 Sarmat “Satan II” ICBM, which has now failed four straight tests. The September 2024 test left a 200-foot crater where the launch site used to be. Putin admitted just days ago it’s still “not yet deployed.” Even the newer Oreshnik missile exists only in tiny numbers — Ukraine has already destroyed one of the three known systems.

The pattern is clear: Putin’s nuclear blackmail depends on theatrical demos of weapons that either don’t work, can’t be mass-produced, or barely exist outside propaganda videos. When your top tank never deploys, your missiles keep failing, and your economic envoys are pitching military tech, deterrence starts to look like theater.

Trump’s approach has been chaotic, maybe even reckless. But it called Putin’s bluff. Trump didn’t bother with the careful restraint Biden had practiced. He reminded Putin that America’s strategic edge, especially in nuclear deterrence, was beyond dispute. And for once, the usual intimidation tactics didn’t land. They increasingly fail to scare the West into abandoning Ukraine and to keep stringing along American presidents with empty threats.

None of this means nuclear risk has vanished. But it does mean that Putin’s most reliable form of leverage — strategic intimidation masked as ambiguity — has expired. He no longer holds the same sway in Washington. And most importantly, he no longer holds the same audience.

When your nuclear intimidation ends with your own spokesman clarifying you’re not actually testing nukes, you’ve lost the room. Putin’s nuclear blackmail appears to have hit its expiration date. What happens next depends on whether the Kremlin can adjust to dealing with a less predictable, less intimidated Washington.

Igor Desyatnikov is a U.S.-based global macro strategist and fund manager, born in Ukraine, with graduate training in international security and political science from Harvard.