Russia is training its navy to target bases deep in Europe with nuclear-capable missiles in preparation for a potential conflict with NATO, according to secret files obtained by the Financial Times.
Presentations to officers ahead of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine detailed maps of targets in locations as far away as the west coast of France and Barrow-in-Furness in the UK.
The Financial Times previously reported that 29 secret Russian military documents showed Moscow had rehearsed the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the early stages of a conflict with a world power.
The latest revelations, shown by Western sources to the FT, suggest that Russia envisioned a conflict with the West far beyond NATO borders, planning a series of overwhelming attacks across Western Europe.
The files, compiled between 2008 and 2014, contain a list of targets for missiles capable of carrying conventional or tactical nuclear weapons. Russian officials have emphasized the advantages of launching a nuclear strike early on.
The announcement also suggested Russia retains the ability to carry nuclear weapons on its surface ships, a capability that experts say carries significant additional risks of escalating tensions and accidents.
The document noted that the navy's “high maneuverability” would allow for “sudden pre-emptive strikes” and “massive missile attacks from various directions,” adding that nuclear weapons are “in principle” designated to be used “in combination with other destructive means” to achieve Russia's objectives.
Analysts who have reviewed the document said it is consistent with NATO assessments of the threat of long-range missile attacks by the Russian navy and the speed with which Russia would resort to nuclear use.
The map, created for presentational rather than practical purposes, shows examples of 32 NATO targets in Europe for the Russian naval fleet.
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But William Alberk, a former NATO official now at the Stimson Center, said the sample was just a small fraction of “hundreds, possibly thousands, of targets mapped across Europe, including military and critical infrastructure targets.”
Analysts and former officials said Russia's ability to launch attacks across Europe meant that any engagement by Russian forces with NATO forces in frontline states such as the Baltic states or Poland would immediately put targets across the continent at risk.
“Their view of war is total war,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at Middlebury International Institute in Monterey who studies arms control.
“They see these (tactical nuclear warheads) as weapons that could win a war,” he added. “They're going to want to use them, and they're going to want to use them pretty quickly.”
Tactical nuclear weapons are delivered by ground- or sea-launched missiles or from aircraft, but have a shorter range and less destructive power than larger “strategic” weapons designed to target the United States.
But it would still have the potential to release far more energy than those dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Navy Commander Admiral Alexander Moiseyev attend the Navy Day ceremony in St. Petersburg last month. © Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened Ukraine's European allies in an effort to block Western military support for Kiev. “They need to remember that they are a small, densely populated country,” he said in May.
The presentation also mentioned the option of a so-called “demonstration attack,” which would involve detonating a nuclear weapon in a remote location “at a time of imminent threat of aggression” to intimidate Western countries before an actual conflict. Russia has never acknowledged that such an attack is part of its policy.
According to the file, such an attack would demonstrate “the availability and readiness of precision non-strategic nuclear weapons” and “the intent to use nuclear weapons.”
“They hope that the fear of Russia using nuclear weapons will be the magic key that unlocks Western acquiescence,” said Alberque, a former director of NATO's Centre for Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The document states that Russia's top priority in any conflict with NATO would be to “degrade the enemy's military and economic power.” Analysts say this could mean attacking civilian facilities and critical infrastructure, as Russia has done in Ukraine.
Fabian Hofmann, a postdoctoral researcher in nuclear policy at the University of Oslo, said the combination of nuclear and conventional strikes outlined in the presentation was “basically a package to let the enemy know that things are really heating up now, and that it would be wise to start a conversation with us about how we can resolve this.”
By NATO calculations, the allies have less than 5 percent of the air defense capability they need to protect the alliance's eastern flank from a full-scale attack from Russia.
In June, Putin said Europe would be “more or less defenseless” against Russian missile attacks.
Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Russian strategists believe nuclear weapons would be central to the early stages of a conflict with NATO because of the Russian military's inferior conventional weapons resources. “Russia doesn't have enough missiles,” he said.
The leaked documents also show that Russia retains the capability to carry tactical nuclear weapons on its surface ships, despite a 1991 agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States to remove such weapons.
Russia's tactical nuclear weapons portfolio includes “nuclear-tipped anti-submarine missiles for surface ships and submarines” and “nuclear-tipped ship- and land-based guided anti-aircraft missiles for destroying enemy air defenses.”
Alberque said the revelation was shocking, given the inherent dangers of transporting nuclear weapons at sea, even in peacetime.
Unlike strategic ballistic missile submarines, which are designed to launch nuclear warheads from deep seas, surface ships carrying nuclear warheads are at much higher risk of damage from storms and enemy attacks.
Recent exercises ordered by Putin to rehearse the use of tactical nuclear weapons indicate that the leaked documents are still consistent with current Russian military doctrine.
In June, Russian forces conducted drills in Kaliningrad to load Soviet-era P-270 anti-ship cruise missiles onto Tarantul-class corvettes that NATO officials say are stockpiled with undeclared tactical nuclear warheads.
Footage of the training showed soldiers from Russia's 12th Nuclear Weapons Corps, which manages nuclear warheads within the Russian military, practicing moving the missiles in containers used to transport missiles with full nuclear weapons, with proper security and procedures for handling the warheads.
Cartography: Steven Bernard
