What if Russia’s nuclear weapons fall into the wrong hands? Orban: Don’t participate in the refugee deal

After the failed uprising of the Wagner mercenaries, concerns about a destabilization of Russia are growing. “The instability of a nuclear power is dangerous,” Christian Dussey, director of the Swiss intelligence service (NDB), warned Monday in his “Security Switzerland 2023” situation report.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said before a meeting with his EU colleagues that Russia was in a “pathetic state”. There is a danger that the “monopoly of the public power, the army, the police” will soon no longer be in the hands of the government. A destabilization of the country could lead to major problems – “not only for Europe, but for the whole world”, Asselborn emphasizes. Namely when, in the chaos, questionable troops gained access to the country’s nuclear weapons inventory.

Since the start of the war with Ukraine in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons, most recently at the end of March this year. So far there have only been threats – but the use of nuclear weapons is not off the table. Especially not if even more radical, nationalist forces seize power in Russia. Former NATO Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow recently said that a toppled Putin regime is unlikely to be able to deny access to the nuclear codes for long, if at all.

How big is Russia’s nuclear arsenal?

Russia is currently the largest nuclear power in the world. Of the world’s approximately 12,500 nuclear weapons, 5,889 are owned by the Russians, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Nuclear Notebook. 4,489 of these would be functional, 1,400 were decommissioned and would be destroyed in time as part of the disarmament treaties. Experts estimate that Russia can currently use some 1,674 nuclear warheads immediately, i.e. within minutes.

Half of these ready-to-use nuclear bombs would be launched from land-based launchers, about 580 would go to the nuclear submarines, and the rest would be dropped from the 60 to 70 heavy bombers.

A distinction is also made between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. Strategic nuclear weapons are not used in direct combat, but over long distances. Tactical warheads, on the other hand, have a shorter range and lower yield and can therefore also be deployed on the battlefield. They are intended as a balance of power when a belligerent cannot achieve its military objectives with conventional weapons.

In the mid-1980s, Russia and the United States agreed to decommission long-range nuclear systems. The treaty was extended in 2009, with both states committing to reducing their nuclear warheads to a maximum of 1,550 and the number of delivery systems such as ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles and bombers to 800. However, since last summer, inter-controls have been discontinued by Russia.

Despite nuclear disarmament, Russia has also been working for decades to modernize its nuclear forces. According to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, nearly 90 percent of old weapon systems will be replaced by new ones by 2021.

Where are the nuclear weapons?

According to two nuclear weapons experts from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Russia's nuclear arsenal is scattered across the country in some 48 locations, many of them in the west of the country near the NATO border. The strategic missiles are stored in about twelve locations across Russia. There are also about 35 base depots for tactical nuclear weapons. Moreover, the deployment of nuclear warheads in Belarus, announced by Putin in March, is imminent.

Major missile bases in the west are Kozelsk, 200 kilometers southwest of Moscow, and Tatishchevo, 600 kilometers southeast of Moscow. The depots for the nuclear submarines are located at two bases near Murmansk and Rybachiy on the Pacific coast. The nuclear bombers are stationed at the English base, 600 kilometers southeast of Moscow and in the Far East of Russia on the border with China. The experts do not agree whether nuclear bombs are also stored in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Cities in European NATO countries could be destroyed by Russian ballistic missiles within 20 minutes, according to experts. For major metropolitan areas in the US, the time frame is approximately 30 minutes.

Who has access to nuclear weapons?

It is considered certain that there are three so-called nuclear briefcases ("Cheget") with launch codes in Russia. One belongs to President Putin, one belongs to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, and the third belongs to Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov. Although President Putin is the supreme decision maker when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons, he cannot order such a thing alone.

This requires the codes from two nuclear briefcases - so the president depends on one of the two generals. "This system serves as a safeguard against a serious mistake in the use of nuclear weapons," Putin's top propagandist Boris Solovyov said last year.

However, it is not exactly known how authorizing a nuclear attack works. The military has already pointed out that there are other people in the nuclear chain of command who are in control and, in an unstable situation, may not follow through on a launch order without an outside threat. “The well-trained, highly professional military leaders in Russia would not like to cross that red line. They're not crazy," an unnamed NATO diplomat said, according to the Morning Post.

It is also unlikely that a heavily armed insurgent group would take some tactical warheads from a nuclear depot and use them on the battlefield. As military scientist Pavel Podvig of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva recently explained, these cannot be used without the help of soldiers from the regular nuclear units. Simply connecting to the carrying system is a very complex task. The greatest danger is therefore a so-called “dirty bomb”, in which conventional explosives are mixed with radioactive material.