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The tactical nuclear exercise carried out by Russia's Southern Military District since May 21, although seemingly deterrent, is actually part of the Kremlin's series of "both fighting and appeasing" moves toward the West.
The Kremlin's decisive deployment of tactical nuclear weapons not only effectively counters the trend of openly strengthening NATO's "nuclear belt" attack capabilities near its western borders, but also effectively suppresses the Zelensky administration's turmoil when urgently asking the West to directly intervene in the Ukrainian battlefield.
Contrary to public concerns about the nuclear deterrence between Russia and NATO that is escalating out of control, developments on the ground have revealed signs that both sides are taking extremely cautious steps, even somewhat restrained, so as not to push the nuclear balance too far to the disadvantage of the other side.
The first sign of this "self-restraint" trend was the move by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on May 21 to affirm that the nuclear test conducted a week earlier by the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in Nevada "does not constitute a violation of the provisions of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) or the US nuclear test ban."
In fact, the US has not yet ratified the CTBT and this is the first nuclear test near the limit (without causing an explosion) conducted by the US since September 2021, causing great concern among international public opinion.
The US also showed many signs of "self-restraint" when it officially granted nuclear certification ahead of schedule for the F-35A aircraft to be allowed to carry the B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bomb (and only this version) in March this year.
This decision poses a huge threat to Russia as Lockheed Martin estimates that there will be 550 F-35s operating in Europe by 2030. Therefore, the dominance of the F-35 will make the ability to transport B61-12 thermonuclear bombs from Europe to Russian territory extremely dangerous.
However, in a surprising move, the US Department of Defense has now shifted its focus to developing a new nuclear bomb, the B61-13, after delaying the B61-12 bomb production project for many years due to budget overspending. Therefore, although there is information that the US has begun delivering the B61-12 bomb in December 2022, the schedule for delivering the B61-12 to Europe is still unclear.
In other words, the US side also seems to want to reduce the ability to simultaneously provide both transport vehicles (F-35A) and suitable strategic nuclear weapons (B61-12) to Europe.
Similarly, Russia also has a stance of avoiding strategic nuclear conflicts (with a destructive power of 15 to 1,000 kilotons) and only mobilizing tactical nuclear weapons with a less destructive power of about 1 kiloton, which are compact in size, easy to transport, and are not limited by any arms control treaties between the US and Russia.
Therefore, Russia's current goal is only to perfect the "tactical nuclear belt" connecting with new nuclear storage facilities on the southern border to Belarus and the Kaliningrad region, in order to create a "new balance" with nuclear deployment steps that are "raised high" from NATO but "hit lightly" led by the US.
This nuclear exercise also contributes to tightening all three rings of encirclement around Ukraine that Russia is promoting in a comprehensive manner. Of which, the "long-range encirclement" is described very fully in the message published by the Russian Ministry of Defense, including the use of the Iskander system (range of 500km) in the missile force, while the air force will be equipped with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles with "special warheads".
The appearance of the Kinzhal missile with a range of more than 2,000km caused even the US Patriot air defense battery within a range of 30km to be "neutralized".
The above 30km range coincides with the calculations to fix the "buffer zone" that the Russian army is trying to expand in the Kharkov area right now to create a "close-range encirclement" about 10-15km from the Russia-Ukraine border.
And finally, the "core encirclement" is when Russia is continuously conducting activities to attack the legitimacy of Mr. V. Zelensky's administration because it believes that his term ended on May 21 according to the Ukrainian Constitution.
Russia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya noted that all mediators of the peace process in Ukraine must take into account that Mr. Zelensky's mandate has expired and that signing any documents with him after May 20 is also invalid.
Overall, this Russian nuclear exercise is a carefully calculated move to increase overall pressure at the most disadvantageous moment for Ukraine both internally and externally.
The severe shortage of artillery shells, weapons and main air defense systems such as Patriot, along with NATO's "play hard and play hard" attitude in nuclear deterrence against Russia and the weakening legitimacy of the Zelensky administration will greatly affect international public opinion ahead of the Ukraine Peace Summit in mid-June.
