Just hours before Mr Biden was to speak at the White House, Ukraine responded, accusing the Russians of secretly making dirty bombs themselves at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which Russian troops are occupying from now on.
US intelligence officials are divided over Russia’s intentions. Some think that the repeated threats to use nuclear weapons are a bluff; others say they are part of a Russian military doctrine called “escalate to defuse”, in which a small nuclear device is detonated to warn adversaries to stay away.
Over the past few weeks, the Biden administration has been conducting tabletop exercises, trying to figure out how Russia might try to gain an advantage by threatening to use a nuclear weapon — and under what conditions it might detonate one. According to officials, the purpose of the exercises is to determine how the United States and its allies might respond.
No one in the administration is advocating for a nuclear response. But among the options under discussion are conventional military strikes against Russian forces inside Ukraine, likely carried out by Ukrainian forces. The United States and its NATO allies would use this moment to further isolate Russia from the world, especially China and other countries, such as India, which continue to buy its oil. But it’s unclear how Beijing in particular would react to a Russian use of a small nuclear weapon, however destructive.
On Tuesday, a reporter asked Mr Biden if Russia was “preparing to deploy a dirty bomb or a nuclear weapon itself”. The chair focused on the second part of the question. While officials say a dirty bomb would be a tragic escalation, their obvious concern is what it might portend. In US intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, there are fears that Russia is staging a provocation to justify the use of a nuclear weapon in response.
US officials appeared to have intelligence that supported the fear, but declined to discuss what it was or their degree of belief. But in going public with Russia’s assertions to Mr. Austin and General Milley, they seemed to be following a pattern of publicizing the information in an effort to lock Mr. Putin in as he sought options beyond his failing military force.
“Russia is pushing false allegations in a transparent way,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday. “In the past, we have seen Russia use allegations as a pretext to step up. And as the president said, we don’t know if that’s the case here.