According to secret documents obtained by the Financial Times, Russia has trained its navy to attack targets deep inside Europe with nuclear-capable missiles in the event of a possible conflict with NATO.
Maps of targets in areas as far-flung as the west coast of France and Barrow-in-Furness in Britain are detailed in a presentation for officers prepared before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The FT had previously reported, based on the same 29 secret Russian military files, that Moscow had rehearsed the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the early stages of a conflict with a major world power.
The latest revelations show that Russia anticipated conflict with the West well beyond its immediate Nato border and planned a series of devastating attacks across Western Europe. The documents were provided to the FT by Western sources.
The files, compiled between 2008 and 2014, contain a target list for missiles capable of carrying both conventional warheads and tactical nuclear weapons. Russian officers emphasize the benefits of early use of nuclear strikes.
The presentation also shows that Russia still has the ability to transport nuclear weapons on surface ships, a capability that experts say poses a significant additional risk of escalation or accident.
The document notes that the Navy’s “high maneuverability” allows it to deliver “sudden and preemptive strikes” and “massive missile attacks… from various directions.” It adds that nuclear weapons are “usually” intended for use “in combination with other means of destruction” to achieve Russia’s goals.
Analysts who reviewed the documents said they were consistent with NATO’s assessment of the threat posed by long-range missile attacks by the Russian Navy and the speed with which Russia would likely resort to using nuclear weapons.
The maps were created for presentation purposes rather than for operational use and show a selection of 32 NATO targets in Europe for the Russian Navy.
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But William Alberque, a former NATO official who now works at the Stimson Center, said the sample was only a small part of “hundreds, if not thousands, of targets mapped across Europe … including military and critical infrastructure targets.”
Given Russia’s ability to launch attacks across Europe, targets across the continent would be at risk once its army clashed with NATO forces in frontline countries such as the Baltic states and Poland, analysts and former government officials say.
“Their concept of war is total war,” says Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey who studies arms control.
“They see these things (tactical nuclear warheads) as potentially war-winning weapons,” he added. “They’re going to want to use them, and they’re going to want to use them pretty quickly.”
Tactical nuclear weapons can be launched from land- or sea-based missiles or from aircraft, but they have a shorter range and are less destructive than the larger “strategic” weapons aimed at the United States.
However, they can still release considerably more energy than the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly issued threats against Ukraine’s European allies in an effort to deter Western military support for Kyiv. “They must remember that they are small, densely populated states,” he said in May.
The presentation also mentions the possibility of a so-called demonstration strike – the detonation of a nuclear weapon in a remote area “at a time of imminent threat of aggression” before an actual conflict, in order to instill fear in Western countries. Russia has never admitted that such attacks are part of its doctrine.
Such an attack, the files say, would demonstrate “the availability and readiness of precise non-strategic nuclear weapons” as well as the “intent to use nuclear weapons.”
Alberque, a former director of NATO’s Centre for Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, said: “They want the fear of Russian nuclear weapons to be the magic key that unlocks Western consent.”
The documents say Russia’s top priority in a conflict with NATO is to “weaken the enemy’s military and economic potential.” Analysts said that meant Russia would attack civilian objects and critical infrastructure, as it did in Ukraine.
Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral student at the University of Oslo who studies nuclear policy, said the combination of nuclear and conventional attacks outlined in the presentation “forms a package that basically signals to the adversary that the situation is really getting tense. And it would be wise for you to talk to us about how we can handle that.”
According to NATO calculations, the Alliance countries have less than five percent of the air defense capabilities that would be needed to protect the Alliance’s eastern flank against a full-scale attack by Russia.
Putin said in June that Europe was “more or less defenseless” against Russian missile attacks.
Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Russian strategists viewed nuclear weapons as central to the early stages of a conflict with NATO in part because their military has fewer conventional resources. “They just don’t have enough missiles,” she said.
The leaked documents also show that Russia retains the capability to carry tactical nuclear weapons on surface ships, despite a 1991 agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States to dismantle these weapons.
Russia’s carriers of tactical nuclear weapons include “anti-submarine missiles with nuclear warheads stationed on surface ships and submarines” as well as “ship- and land-based anti-aircraft guided missiles with nuclear warheads for combating enemy air defense groups”.
Given the dangers of transporting nuclear weapons at sea, even in peacetime, the admission is shocking, Alberque said.
Unlike a strategic ballistic missile submarine designed to launch nuclear warheads from deep ocean waters, a surface ship carrying nuclear warheads would be at much greater risk from storm damage or enemy strike.
Recent exercises involving the use of tactical nuclear weapons ordered by Putin suggest that the leaked documents are still consistent with current Russian military doctrine.
In June, Russian forces practiced loading Soviet-era P-270 anti-ship missiles onto a Tarantul-class corvette in Kaliningrad, where NATO officials say an undeclared stockpile of tactical nuclear warheads is stored.
Footage of the exercise showed soldiers from the 12th GUMO, which is responsible for storing nuclear warheads within the Russian military, practicing transporting the missile in a container that they would also use to transport a fully nuclear-armed missile, accompanied by appropriate guards and in accordance with the procedures for handling a nuclear warhead.
Cartography by Steven Bernard
