In a public consultation on Sunday, Russia's president summoned the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the army chief, Valery Gerasimov, and ordered them to "transfer the deterrent forces" reporting on the Russian army's nuclear weapons "to a special combat mode".
Do Putin's words have a specific military meaning?
Although the diplomatic threat was clear enough, the exact phrase confused nuclear experts and defense ministries, who did not recognize what a "special combat mode" might specifically entail. But there was agreement that the threat, though it had risen to a degree, remained at a low level.
Pavel Podvig, widely considered a leading expert on Russian nuclear forces, tweeted that Putin's order "most likely" meant "the nuclear command and control system received what is known as a preliminary order." This would trigger the system, in effect, allowing the "launch order" to be "executed if issued."
It would also, he wrote, allow nuclear weapons to be launched "if the president is removed or cannot be reached," but, he added, only in the event that it "detects actual nuclear explosions on Russian territory."
David Cullen, of the Nuclear Intelligence Agency, said this was, in some ways, "analogous to the British system" where Trident nuclear submarine commanders are given emergency letters, signed by the prime minister, with instructions on how to act if the UK is believed to have been destroyed by an all-out nuclear attack.
Putin's nuclear posture requires the West to tread extremely carefully.
[BR][BR]Both Podvig and other experts, including James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment, said Putin's order could also imply further operational changes. This could include sending further nuclear-armed submarines to sea or dispersing long-range nuclear missiles around Russian territory from where they could theoretically be deployed.
But that may not necessarily be the case, Podvig added, given that Putin's phrase was deliberately ambiguous.
What is the thinking of Western governments?
Ben Wallace, Britain's defence secretary, said the UK did not recognise the terms used by Putin. "That is not a term that is in their doctrine," the minister told the BBC on Monday morning. The move, he said, was designed to scare the West and "remind people that they have a deterrent" and that it was a distraction designed to ensure the West "talked about that rather than the lack of success they have in Ukraine."
The defense secretary also warned that Russia could, in theory, use so-called tactical nuclear weapons in the fight against Ukraine. But that would amount to a massive - and still unlikely - escalation against what Putin has described as "one people" with the Russians.
"They could be as powerful as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Most people say there is no such thing as a non-strategic nuclear weapon," said Sebastian Brixey-Williams, co-director of thinktank Basic."
Has Russia said anything more since Sunday to explain itself?
There was a signal, from the Kremlin itself, on Monday that its statement was primarily a form of high-stakes diplomacy. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the decision came in response to several Western warnings that there could be "clashes and conflicts between NATO and Russia." He added: "I would not call the authors of those statements by name, although it was the British foreign secretary."
Matthew Harris, a nuclear expert at thinktank Rusi, said the statements were a warning of a different kind. It was, in the first case, simple intimidation - "we can hurt you and fighting us is dangerous" - and a reminder to the West, which is increasingly arming the Ukrainians, not to go too far. "Russia may be planning a violent escalation in Ukraine and this is a 'stay out' warning to the West."
Source GUARDIAN
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