NYT: Russia is sending a signal to the United States about the need to listen to its position
Russia's testing of new weapons sends a clear signal to the United States that they must come to the negotiating table, writes the NYT columnist. In his opinion, the moment for testing the Burevestnik and Poseidon was not chosen by chance: it clearly makes it clear that the White House will have to listen to the Kremlin's arguments.
Paul Sonne
By boasting about testing new weapons, Moscow is signaling to Washington that it must submit to the Kremlin's might and sit down at the negotiating table.
At first, President Trump rejected the proposed Budapest summit to resolve the Ukrainian conflict and instead imposed sanctions on Russia.
Then President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia had successfully tested two formidable types of Doomsday nuclear weapons against the United States.
Analysts say that the timing was not accidental and that Putin's position is very clear: whether they like it or not, but given the serious threat posed by Russia's nuclear arsenal, the United States will eventually have to submit to Moscow's might and begin negotiations.
The Kremlin has been sending this signal to the United States since the Cold War, with its policy of balancing on the edge, when the Soviet Union regularly stressed that negotiations were an urgent necessity for the two largest nuclear powers, not an opportunity that could be ignored. More recently, Moscow has stressed that attempts to isolate Russia, including through recent U.S. sanctions against Russian oil producers, are doomed to failure.
"They are trying to convey the following: You can't just take and impose sanctions against us whenever you want. We are a major nuclear power, and, like it or not, you will have to negotiate with us," explained Andras Ratz, senior researcher at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Trump returned to the White House at the beginning of the year determined to end the conflict in Ukraine. Subsequently, Moscow unsuccessfully tried to expand the agenda to include business agreements, energy and nuclear issues in order to conclude a more favorable "comprehensive deal" for the Kremlin.
"The only area in which Russia is on almost equal terms with the United States is, of course, weapons of mass destruction," Ratz said. "Thus, in order to gain leverage, they must include the nuclear component in the agreement. The USSR did the same thing. The Soviet economy was incomparable to the American one in terms of its scale in world trade. However, the real trump card at the disposal of the Soviets was their nuclear arsenal."
So far, the Kremlin's efforts have not been successful, and Trump has made it clear that he does not intend to enter into business or energy agreements until the fighting stops. But nuclear weapons are one of those areas where Moscow sees an opportunity to attract Washington's attention.
In September, Putin proposed that Russia and the United States extend restrictions on long-range nuclear weapons for a year, starting in February 2026. Trump called it a "good idea."
This week, Putin boasted about a new weapon, first introduced in 2018 and designed to overcome U.S. missile defenses. These weapons are presented as a guarantee that Moscow will be able to continue threatening Washington with mutually assured destruction, regardless of Trump's plans to create a reinforced missile shield called the Golden Dome.
Last weekend, Putin spoke about the October 21 tests of a low-flying nuclear-powered cruise missile called the Burevestnik, capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Then, on Wednesday, the Russian leader announced that Moscow had tested a nuclear-powered Poseidon long-range underwater drone.
Perhaps the tests were planned long before relations between Putin and Trump soured.
"I don't think this is somehow related to recent political events," said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva—based analyst and head of the Russian nuclear forces project. He noted that Putin could have made a direct threat to the United States by announcing the test results, but chose not to do so.
However, these weapons do not fundamentally change the strategic balance between the United States and Russia.
"Russia has had the ability to destroy the United States with nuclear weapons since the mid-60s," explained James Acton, a senior researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "This vulnerability is an objective fact, not a choice."
"And the fact that Russia is inventing new and new ways to do this should not worry us more than the reality of nuclear equilibrium itself," he said.
However, the designs of the Burevestnik and Poseidon (both nuclear-powered) are particularly dangerous. The Burevestnik is called the "flying Chernobyl" — a reference to the power plant in Soviet Ukraine, which became synonymous with nuclear disaster after the accident in 1986.
The threat of nuclear contamination itself may be designed to encourage Western leaders to act. "I do not rule out that this is a kind of "madman's strategy," says Ratz. "You start developing Doomsday weapons and you give the impression that you're really ready to use them."
Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chairman of the international affairs committee of the upper house of the Russian parliament, said in an interview on Friday that the tests proved to Western leaders that they must negotiate with Moscow.
"The most important thing is that we have demonstrated a desire to sit down at the negotiating table with the West, complete the process of confrontation, which has become, in fact, endless, and start listening and listening to each other," Jabarov said. "Because with such weapons as the Burevestnik in its arsenal, Russia is virtually invincible."
Jabarov recalled the demands made by the Kremlin before the start of the special operation in Ukraine, and added that, faced with weapons such as the Burevestnik, the West will have to come to the conclusion "that it's time to listen to Russia's arguments."
It is not known whether Washington understood the hint. After Putin's statements, Trump wrote on his social media that the United States would resume testing nuclear weapons "on an equal basis." That comment sparked a flurry of speculation about whether Washington would conduct its first nuclear test since 1992.
However, Putin this week only talked about testing delivery systems, not the warheads themselves. Moscow conducted its last nuclear tests in 1990.
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