The UK has called Putin’s bluff. Now we wait

Britain has attacked Russia. A bit, anyway. Now the UK must brace for the Kremlin’s reaction to the first use of Storm Shadow missiles against its forces inside the mother country.
The missiles, Franco-British weapons with some American technology on board, cannot be fired with any accuracy without the active participation of Royal Air Force personnel. That means that UK forces have been involved in bombing targets inside Russia. The details of the technical issues are secret but RAF aircraft are, military experts say, a necessary and indispensable part of finding and hitting a Storm Shadow target.
Perhaps in anticipation of this, the Kremlin revised its nuclear doctrine this week to allow for the use of nuclear weapons against a nation that had the backing of a nuclear power if it was itself attacked.
The UK has nukes. The UK is backing Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia. And now the UK has unleashed Storm Shadow, reportedly against a dozen targets in the Kursk region.
Vladimir Putin didn’t need to publicly revise his own nuclear rules. He runs Russia with more direct power and control over every aspect of the state, military forces and economy than any figure in Russia’s history. He revised the doctrine to send a message to the West to spook its leadership into thinking twice before allowing advanced Nato weapons to be used against Russia inside Russia.
The UK and US, which has also sanctioned the use of long-range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) rockets this week, have called his bluff. Senior figures in his military and in the highest political echelons have also been called over the last year or more to warn them of the very personal retaliation they would suffer if Russia looked like it was going to make good on any nuclear threat – no matter how limited.
Defence Secretary John Healey told the Commons that he had spoken with the Russian defence minister, Rustem Umerov, saying that he had pointed out the “robust response” that Ukraine was making to increased Russian air attacks on “cities and children and their escalation in attacks on their energy system”.
Ukraine’s robust response now includes British Storm Shadow missiles, US-made ATACMS, and sorties against Russian air and logistics bases beyond its border with Ukraine. Allowing Ukraine to take its gloves off in this war and use Nato-supplied weapons properly has been long demanded both in Kyiv and by military experts in the West.
The US and her allies have been reluctant to sanction the very attacks Russia now says it has endured because of the fear of a Russian nuclear counter strike – even a battlefield-level small nuclear weapon. The prospect of a new administration in Washington under Donald Trump ending military support for Ukraine appears to have swept away these fears.
There may now be an intelligence assessment that Russia no longer can, or will, shoot back with weapons of mass destruction. Or perhaps the threat was exaggerated in the first place – which means that Ukraine has been held back unnecessarily by its allies.
Kyiv’s sudden use of Storm Shadow is a bold, dangerous stroke intended to begin operations to break the spine of Russia’s operations inside Ukraine and end the impunity of its use of Russian bases to kill Ukrainians.
That it’s been allowed to happen means that the UK and US believe that Putin’s been rattling a rubber sabre. Let’s hope they’re right.
Sam Kiley is the former defence and security editor at Sky News and is writing a book about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine