Looking beyond Ukraine, what is Putin capable of?
Russian president Vladimir Putin appears determined to continue his military conquest of Ukraine until the bitter end, no matter the human cost.
But, so far, he has failed to achieve his stated objectives of crushing Ukraine's military and removing its government, while Ukrainian resistance is proving far tougher than expected.
As the war enters its third week with an uncertain outcome, it looks increasingly as though Putin may be thwarted.
Is Putin more dangerous as a wounded tiger?
But what is more dangerous for the West: a victorious Putin, or a wounded tiger, humiliated and frustrated by his military’s failure to subdue Ukraine and despised internationally as a war criminal?
Beyond Ukraine, there are fears he could lash out by mounting desperate acts of retaliation.
He could cut off energy supplies to Europe, though he needs those revenues to bankroll his own economy. Some experts warn he could launch cyberattacks on government installations, or on commercial ones, such as energy utilities, the power grid, banks and even telecommunications.
Aggressors now have new weapons in the toolbox of modern warfare. "In of thinking about modern war, it's not just about territorial conquest. It's what we call hybrid war, information war, influence operations, propaganda, cyber, ransomware attacks,” Russia expert and former U.S. security official, Fiona Hill, told CBS in a recent interview.
The threat felt in republics once part of the former Soviet Union
He could even turn his attention to the small Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as well as Moldova, to the south. All formerly part of the Soviet Union, Putin has spoken of his desire to reestablish Russian dominance of its former lands. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are all of the Western defense alliance NATO, giving them an extra level of protection from Putin’s wrath. But tiny Moldova, a country of 2.6 million and famous for its wine cellars and forests, is not.
Poland already has an acute refugee problem, with the vast majority of fleeing Ukrainians seeking refuge there. If Poland were to supply Ukraine with warplanes, receiving U.S. F-16s as replacements, as has been suggested, Putin could be prompted to retaliate against the West.
The fear that Russia might lash out at other neighbors is changing attitudes in Sweden and Finland, countries that have resisted NATO hip in favor of neutrality.
Finland has an 830-mile (1,340 kms) border with Russia and Swedes the Cold War when “the enemy from the east”, as the Soviet Union was known, caused more than a few incidents.
Where does he stop? No-one really knows. Perhaps not Putin himself.
On the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin said that “anyone who tries to interfere with us … must know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never before experienced in your history”.
Some experts fear that Putin’s emotions could get the better of him, even provoking a nuclear conflict. “Every time you think, ’No, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Well, yes, he would,” Hill told Politico magazine. “And he wants us to know that, of course. It’s not that we should be intimidated and scared…. We have to prepare for those contingencies and figure out what is it that we’re going to do to head them off.”
Putin’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, this week blamed Western countries of escalating the conflict by arming Ukraine. But he discarded the idea of nuclear war. "I don't want to believe, and I do not believe, that a nuclear war could start," he said.
The risk of nuclear conflict with Russia is low, but ....
The risk that Russia would use nuclear weapons is “incredibly low”, arms control expert, Miles Pomper, told Univision. “They haven’t been used for 75 years. There’s this taboo. It would be crossing a line, even for someone like Putin who has shown himself willing to tolerate more risk, that’s a step too far,” he added.
Pomper, who is a fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury College in California, said the in Ukraine was “an added strain but not a fatal blow” to the international system that evolved after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Back then, the surprise deployment of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles less than 100 miles from the U.S. brought the world to the verge of nuclear war.
The system allows U.S. and Russian officials to gauge how close the other side is to launching an attack. That why U.S. officials last week downplayed a Russian announcement putting its nuclear forces on high alert, noting that they had not seen any signs of readiness to use them.
"No one knows where Putin's red lines are"
"However, “Putin’s not-so-veiled nuclear threats are outside declaratory strategy making predictions difficult,” according according to Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian Foreign Ministry who participated in arms control negotiations in the 1990s.
"According to the declared strategy, nuclear weapons are only assigned to defensive scenarios, they have never been assigned to offensive operations," said Sokov, who now works in Austria with the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP).
"This is quite terrible because now all the Russian statements and all the planning based on these statements are out the window... Which is why the West has tried to be extra-careful: no one knows where Putin's red lines are," he added.
Possibly holding back Putin is his relationship with China. In January, China pushed for the world’s big five nuclear states to pledge they would not target any nation with nuclear weapons as part of a new non-proliferation agreement.
The five powers, which also include Russia, and Britain, said “none of our nuclear weapons are targeted at each other or at any other state”.
Shorter-range non-strategic nuclear weapons – those with a range of less than 500 kms (310 miles) – have never been covered by any agreement, and possesses far more of them than NATO does. Russia has been deploying missiles that can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads, sowing confusion.
The risk of escalation in Ukraine
For now, the biggest fears are of an escalation of the conflict within Ukraine. Western officials have said they are concerned about the possibility of Russia using “non-conventional weapons”, such as chemical, as well as tactical, short-range, nuclear weapons.
The fears around chemical weapon use were borne from the disinformation from Russia leading up to the war and fears of a "false flag" operation claiming that the Ukrainians had used them. That could be used by Moscow to justify its own use of the banned weapons.
Russia’s foreign ministry has claimed to have documents that showed components of biological weapons were made in Ukrainian laboratories - with funding from the US Department of Defense. That was rejected by the Pentagon as "laughable."
Russia has also claimed Ukraine had been seeking nuclear weapons. Ironically, Ukraine once had nuclear weapons dating from the Soviet era, but gave them up in 1994 several years after it won independence.
But most leaders, at least for now, believe Putin’s threat of escalation is a bluff.
“Let me be clear, this is Putin’s style. He is a verbal terrorist threatening the west with this nuclear option,” Latvian President Egil Levits, told one British TV station. “But, of course it would be suicide for Russia and I am sure that Putin and the elite don't want it,” he added.
Finland’s prime minister, Sauli Niinisto, suggested Putin is playing psychological games with the West.
“It might be that this irrationality, what we have seen, at the end, is rational.,” he told PBS NewsHour. “Maybe he wants thing to look like irrational, and that’s the rationality,” he added.