Putin may bring the Ukraine war to a close with nuclear power plant ‘accident’
While the world holds its breath that peace may break out over Ukraine from next week, no one is counting on it. The ball is in Moscow’s court, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio puts it baldly, but there is a real possibility that Vladimir Putin could double down.
So far terms for a deal with Volodymyr Zelensky are harsh – give up land, dreams of joining Nato and the EU, and expect your sovereignty to become a cipher.
If the war goes on – as even Donald Trump has said he fears it might – it could intensify. Rather than let the horrendous scale of bloodletting continue unabated across the thousand kilometres of battlefront, Putin may be tempted to indulge in tactical nuclear poker.
This has long been a real fear amongst defence chiefs.
A nasty nuclear incident, either by accident or design – or, more likely, a design disguised as an accident – might force Zelensky’s government and army to give up. This has been in the standard Russian military playbook for some months now.
Leaky US-Nato umbrella
From the first years of the Nato alliance, founded in 1949, the European allies have basked under the shelter of the American nuclear umbrella. When Germany was admitted to Nato in 1955 it was agreed that while American nuclear munitions and weapons systems could be based on German soil, the German forces themselves would not have nuclear arms.
ZAPORIZHZHIA, UKRAINE - AUGUST 11: (----EDITORIAL USE ONLY - MANDATORY CREDIT - UKRAINIAN PRESIDENCY / HANDOUT' - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS----) A screen grab from a video released by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shows a fire broke in Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine on August 11, 2024. A fire broke out Sunday in Europe's largest nuclear power plant, located in southern Ukraine, with Ukraine and Russia trading blame over the incident. 'Six units in the power plant are in cold shutdown, there is no explosion or other danger,' the Russian-installed regional governor of Zaporizhzhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, said in a written statement. (Photo by Ukrainian Presidency / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
A screen grab from a video released by Ukraine’s president shows a fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on 11 August, 2024. Moscow and Kyiv blamed each other for the incident (Photo: Ukrainian presidency/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Today Trump’s new White House team are less prepared to guarantee European security through US leadership and funding of Nato. The deputy defence secretary-designate, and Pentagon guru, Elbridge Colby categorically stated that the US cannot manage the present level of commitment to European security and manage the growing challenges in the Pacific at the same time and on the present budget. Money and lack of manpower means the Pacific is the priority. The US-Nato umbrella is looking leaky.
With Trump’s renewed Nato-scepticism, there has been a worrying rethink about nuclear protection over Nato Europe. Pentagon officials suggest that the keystone Article 5 of Nato’s founding treaty – that an attack on one ally invites a response from all the allies – is discretionary according to circumstance, and no longer an ironclad obligation.
Lower nuclear threshold
Last year Russia deliberately leaked the revision to its nuclear doctrine, and deployed nuclear units to Belarus. They comprised Iskender intermediate range missiles, and SU-35 bombers, both nuclear-capable.
Members of the National Police Special Purpose Battalion of Zaporizhzhia region fire a D-30 howitzer towards Russian troops on a front line, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine March 7, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer
Ukrainian troops fire towards Russian positions on the front line in Zaporizhzhia region earlier this week (Photo: Reuters)
The new Russian doctrine lowered the nuclear threshold. It states that an attack with conventional weapons, if supported by Nato’s nuclear allies, on sovereign territory of Russia and Belarus, could be met with nukes.
So far Russia has not stated terms for ceasefire in Ukraine, despite the White House repeating that “Moscow wants peace”. At the minimum under vague terms discussed in informal talks in Istanbul two years ago, Putin would want all the territory seized so far since February 2022 to be ceded to Russia, plus guarantees of neutrality.
The Kremlin wants the four oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – partially conquered as things stand – to become part of metropolitan Russia.
This provides an obvious trip-wire for a nuclear incident, the design disguised as an accident. These four provinces are on the front line, and likely to remain so for years to come. An attack on them could be deemed to be an attack on sovereign Russia, triggering a tactical nuclear strike by artillery bombardment or ground rockets involving nuclear warheads.
All eyes on Zaporizhzhia
Zaporizhzhia presents a specific risk of nuclear flare-up. It has the largest of Ukraine’s dozen or so nuclear power plants – only four are still working – and is possibly the largest in Europe. It has been on the line of confrontation for the thousand days of the Ukraine war so far. There have been warnings that it could be the scene of a major contamination incident – conjuring shades of the meltdown of one of the reactors at Chernobyl on the Belarus-Ukraine border in 1986, the worst civil nuclear disaster to date.
FILE - A radiation sign is seen near a broken Russian vehicle with a V letter, a sign of the Russian army, close to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, April 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
A radiation warning sign close to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine in April 2022 (Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/AP)
Zaporizhzhia and several other nuclear facilities across Ukraine, including Russian-occupied Crimea, could be the setting for a “false flag” provocation – an incident triggered by one side’s saboteurs to then be blamed on the enemy.
European Nato allies are now scrambling to put together their own nuclear umbrella force, outside Washington and Trump control. It is being led by France, and so far Denmark, Poland, Germany even, and the UK have offered backing.
The UK has the difficulty of so much of its nuclear arsenal being integrated with the US, with shared facilities for Trident submarines in Scotland, the joint command weapons establishment at Aldermaston, and three shared bomber bases in the UK itself and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
Britain still has a certain degree of independence – and the US relies on a lot of British innovation and R and D. Greater independence from America, and closer working with France on nuclear and other matters will be spelled out in the wake of the Strategic Defence Review and the new UK Strategic Command Structure, due to be unveiled before Easter.
These are desperate times in Ukraine. Zelensky and his generals are in a fight for survival on the negotiating table as much as the battlefront. They have to aim for the least bad settlement available. Moscow is radiating confidence.
Russia may have the numbers – some 630,000 personnel committed to the main theatre of operation – but they are not infinite. With present casualty rates of 40,000 a month, and the evident strains in the overheated war economy, a crisis point is coming – and it could only be months away. So far, the nuclear card is in the Kremlin back pocket, but for how long?
In the gathering storm scenario, the nuclear umbrellas of Nato and the Russian Federation are about as durable as your average parapluie in a force-12 hurricane – and more fateful in their frailty.