Russian Nuclear Doctrine in the Financial Times

Jeffrey Lewis 0:06

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I am Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a professor, at least last I checked, at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:26

And I'm Aaron Stein, Chief Content Officer at War on the Rocks. And Middlebury doesn't want to get rid of you. I think Middlebury likes you.

Jeffrey 0:35

Oh, it's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. I think Middlebury mostly likes me. But, you know, I'm a lot of trouble, Aaron.

Aaron 0:44

You, the renegade, arms control podcaster, bon vivant, and, you know, swearer, prolific swearer on... What are you talking about, man? We have to bleep it out, but you can let it go. How's things, man? How's California? Did you survive the winter river? Things are okay.

Jeffrey 1:04

Yes, yes, the atmospheric river, which dumped lots and lots of water. It was a bonus for me because when I spent the month of January in Vermont, where we're actually setting up like a little tiny office of undergraduates now, I bought L.L. Bean Boots. Because I wanted to be, you know, like with the program. But now that I'm back here, like when the hell am I going to wear bean boots?

Well, the answer is during the atmospheric river.

Aaron 1:33

I have something to report. I actually watched Oppenheimer for the first time since it came out the other day because it was on Peacock. And I'm the only under 50 person in America who has Peacock.

Jeffrey 1:45

That's the NBC streaming app?

Aaron 1:48

Yep, yep. We have it in this house. I think it's some sort of perk from an American Express card. So we have it, and it was streaming for free, and we finally turned it on. Oh, yay for you. What did you think of Oppenheimer? I realize that's another podcast, but... Yeah, we're not talking about that today. I thought it was good.

I've read the book so many times. I do realize where the story deviates, but it's a movie, and I thought the movie was extremely well done. And I was riveted throughout the three hours, even though I knew how it ended.

Jeffrey 2:16

I mean... It has been like 70 years, so spoilers are not a thing.

Aaron 2:25

Well, speaking about not a thing, there was a thing in our community in the Financial Times. They got a leak. I don't know where they got the leak from. I read the story last week of Russian simulated war planning for an invasion by China. Lots of chatter on the Twitters about it.

Jeffrey 2:43

Yeah, so I actually think This was really great reporting, but I strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly disagreed with the framing. So I thought we would talk through this. The headline is, Leaked Russian military files reveal criteria for nuclear strike. Doctrine for tactical nuclear weapons outlined in training scenarios for an invasion by China. It's some great reporting by Max Seddon and Chris Cook.

But the framing is... At least in some of the stories I saw, and I think particularly in social media, is that the threshold for Russian use in these documents is allegedly lower than the stated threshold. And that's what the podcast is going to be about. But just for housekeeping, these were classified documents They were seen by the Financial Times, which I presume means the Financial Times does not have possession of them.

There were 29 files from 2008 to 2014, and these were scenarios for war games and presentations for naval officers. I presume these were either in Russian and therefore translated by the reporters, or They were documents that were acquired by, I'm guessing, UK intelligence, translated, and then made available to those reporters, either through a leak or, you know, accidentally on purpose.

Aaron 4:34

Yeah, no, and I agree with your assessment that it was excellent reporting. I think those two reporters are actually quite good. And I find the Financial Times to be one of my favorite newspapers to read. With that said, it was a lot of So I guess the interesting thing is that it was confirmation of a lot of the things that the Russians have said publicly and a lot of those – a lot of what those of us who studied the subject assumed was to be true, which was how the Russians think about when and how and under what circumstances they would employ certain types of nuclear weapons.

Jeffrey 5:10

Yeah. I mean I – I think that it simply tells us what we already know, although I'm honestly rather reassured, although I wouldn't have expected the documents to be any different, and we can talk about why. But it is important to note that the story says that the classified papers describe a threshold for using tactical nuclear weapons that is lower than Russia has ever publicly admitted, according to experts who reviewed and verified the documents.

And I, you know, one of those experts is William Alberque, friend of the pod. We'll probably have him on at some point. I just disagree with that expert interpretation.

Aaron 5:53

Yeah, again, This is not a personal shot, friend of the pod, probably friend of, or at least colleague of you and I, and we'll run into each other at a bar somewhere in the world pretty soon. I mean, I'm going to be at a bar with the man in Tokyo in a matter of weeks. Right. So of the two experts... You can take it up with me there, man.

Jeffrey 6:11

I'm buying.

Aaron 6:12

Of the two experts, I tended to more view, to come closer to the Jack Watling interpretation of the documents, which is... This is more or less what the Russians have told us about where they would think about using nuclear weapons. I think the framing in the war game is interesting. I think that it was for naval officers.

It was also interesting. And I think the reaffirmation is interesting. But I think the findings in that sense are not. I mean, they're interesting. Don't get me wrong. But they're not like jaw-droppingly shocking or changing my priors, which, again, I think is a good thing. Yeah, absolutely.

Jeffrey 6:49

So one thing I would say is it's very unclear to me from the story how much of the nearly 30 documents are intended for naval officers and how much are from other materials. My... Guess is that there is some ambiguity about that in order to hide the sourcing, you know. If the Russians had an itemized list of the 29 documents, or or 28 documents, how many is it? I have to look again, I forget. 29, then you know, you might be able to figure out like, well, who would have these 29 documents? So I, I get why there's some.

Some ambiguity about that. But I did sort of wonder like, why do you have all these documents that seem to be focused on the Navy? And some of the documents are really Navy focused. And then like, yeah, like what role, like why, then what the hell is this? China invades China. Invades Russia's scenario without seeing the documents.

I don't really think we can know. So yeah, it's odd, but I do. I agree with you. And I think maybe we should walk through why we think that, what Russia's published doctrine is, and why we think that these two things are the same. But certainly your reaction, my reaction, and honestly the reaction of most people I know is...

The hyperbole is a little much. These exercises seem to describe Russia's posture and policy, as we know.

Aaron 8:18

Yeah. So for those who are not steeped in the documents, I think now is the time for you or I to explain what the Russians themselves say about when they would contemplate the use of nuclear weapons. And why don't you take it from there? Because you had a pretty good Twitter thread about it. And I'll bounce off you.

Jeffrey 8:35

Well, so, I mean, while we're talking about friends of the pod, Anya Fink, who worked at the Center for Naval Analysis, translated a Russian decree signed by Vladimir Putin known as the Foundations of State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Area of Nuclear Deterrence, which is awfully useful because we have the Russian statement Can you hear the sirens out there?

Aaron 9:09

Yes. Hopefully it's not an air raid siren. And that's Vladimir Putin playing us back. Oh, my gosh. It sounds like a fire truck if you ask me.

Jeffrey 9:17

Yeah. If it's Vladimir Putin, it's Novichok in the underwear, right? Novichok, sorry.

Aaron 9:26

Yeah. Anyways, I think our listeners will like that interlude. Yeah.

Jeffrey 9:31

Yeah. Okay. So we have the, the decree signed by Putin in Russian, which has been translated by a person that we, we know and know and respect who, by the way, fantastic. She is fantastic. I mean, the best part of the little translator notes, you know, like each word that's chosen, it's like, Oh yeah, this is a weird word because you know, this is a better word, but it doesn't mean quite the same thing in Russian.

Like the translator notes are great. But there are these kinds of, I think, of stacked questions, right? When you are thinking about, like, what is a country's nuclear policy and posture? And, you know, the simplest one, I suppose— Is when would Russia use nuclear weapons? And the official Russian version, right, and I need to find the precise phrase here, which you think I've had all this time to queue it up, Aaron, and I didn't do it.

The Russian Federation shall reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it or its allies. So that's condition one is you nuke the Russians or chem them or bio them, you know. Putin takes off his shirt. And then... Paragraph or part two, clause two is, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.

And that to me is precisely the same thing that the story outlines. Where they say that the slides summarize the threshold for using nuclear weapons as a combination of factors where losses suffered by Russian forces, quote, would irrevocably lead to their failure to stop major enemy aggression, a critical situation for the state security of Russia, close quote.

And those are actually two quotes that are kind of slammed together.

Aaron 12:02

Right.

Jeffrey 12:02

That's that's the existence of the state, a critical situation for the state security of Russia where they fail to stop major aggression. That's you know, that's you know, that's the fall of France. You know, that's that's the bad day. And that that makes sense to me.

Aaron 12:19

Yeah, no, it does. What is interesting is that when I hear that and when I read that, and then when you place it in the context of how Russians were thinking about conflict, particularly after the Cold War, They're also thinking about an American and NATO aerospace attack. Do you know what I mean? You know, on command and control facilities, the abilities of the, you know, basically the ability of the leadership, in this case Putin, to execute any war orders on top of this.

And so what I found interesting in the documents is that they were simulating it against China. Not that they wouldn't consider China as a potential foe, because anybody who studied the Soviet Union or Russia know that they're more frenemies than they are ally. But that they're running the same sort of scenarios with all their neighbors.

Jeffrey 13:03

Yeah, I don't know if this leak is a deliberate leak by the Western or UK, in particular, intelligence services, or if the leak comes out of Russia. But if their government did it or our government did it, good on them, because it's stirring the pot, right? Like, oh, hey. Just so you know, here are 29 cables about the Russians nuking the crap out of you.

But to be fair, the exercise that's described is definitely an instance where Russian units have collapsed. And the use of nuclear weapons, again, quoting the doc, this is one of the few block quotes we get. You know, we don't actually get a lot of quotes in the FT story, which again, is I think it's a function of the constraints of reporting.

It's not a criticism. The order has been given by the commander in chief to use nuclear weapons in the event the enemy deploys second echelon units and the south, that's Russia in this scenario, threatens to attack further in the direction of the main strike, which is the, you know, units have moved in. The Russian army has collapsed and they're prepared to use nuclear weapons if the Chinese bring more troops up to continue pushing toward Moscow.

Aaron 14:23

Exactly.

Jeffrey 14:24

That's reasonable to me.

Aaron 14:26

It is reasonable.

Jeffrey 14:27

All this stuff is insane, but if you're Moscow and you have nuclear weapons, when are you going to use them?

Aaron 14:32

It's a pretty good time. I mean, you could place with some of I mean, these are obviously because it's translated with a little bit better flowing English and sort of stilted DOD legalese and just put that 1983 and just put Berlin or like towards march towards Western Europe. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Right.

Jeffrey 14:52

I mean, the picture that I picked for my my Twitter thread about this was. Was that famous picture of the French people crying with the fall of France. Because I have always argued, and I trigger all kinds of arguments with my French friends who want to argue it's more complicated than this. But my view is France's nuclear policy is endlessly credible because they don't have to engage in like – Complicated hypothetical scenarios to justify the weapons.

They're like, hey, do you remember the bad day? Not letting that happen again. And you'd be like, well, what if the tanks were? And they were like, no, no, no, you didn't hear me. Remember the bad day? The guy crying? Not happening again. So to me, and honestly, I was making this argument to one of my students the other day, At some level, no matter what countries say or present, that is every country's nuclear policy.

Every world leader has, I think, a concept of the collapse of the state in the face of foreign aggression, and they want to stave that off.

Aaron 16:08

I think the only unknown variable that you would slide back and forth as you're assessing the likelihood of nuclear use is not that the policy reflects the doctrine. It's that when Putin is sitting in his dacha or in his mansion or palace in Sochi or wherever he hangs out in Moscow, What does he judge to be actual threats to his existence in the state?

Is it conventional attack on his houses? Is it the fall of Russian lines? Is it, you know, basically isolation as a result of a stalemated war in Ukraine? I think that's where people get anxious and you get those sort of, again, not a criticism, I doubt the reporters wrote the headline, but you get that type of headline and framing to probably drive up engagement on social media.

Jeffrey 16:52

Okay, so this is an area where I think the reporting is really excellent because the reporting actually gets at this. So one thing that the decree that Putin signed said... Is that the decision to use nuclear weapons is taken by the president of the Russian Federation. The conditions that make it possible that Russia will employ nuclear weapons include, and then it lists things.

And so one is warning of a launch from, well, just basically warning of a launch, use of nuclear weapons if they're detected. And One of them, which is really great, is not great, but I mean, it's very specific. It's adversary actions affecting critically important state or military objects of the Russian Federation, the disablement of which could lead to the disruption of retaliatory actions by nuclear forces.

So there's this kind of flagging in the document that... You know, if you start sinking our SSBNs, there's like a magic point at which Putin is going to really lose patience with this. And this makes sense, right? This is this is almost certainly true across the board. How do you know when your military is collapsing? How do you know when your deterrent is threatened?

And they actually have numerical and God love the Russians. They have numerical thresholds, Aaron.

Aaron 18:14

So I don't mean to cut you off because you're on a good roll here, but when I read that section in it, I was, again, thinking of now departed friend of the show, Dennis Gormley, and all of that chatter that you and I used to hear and engage with was about conventional attack on Russian ICBM silos. So yes, it's for the Navy.

Yes, you're talking about SSBNs. But I was like, this is exactly what Russians used to say. You don't have to use nukes any longer because your conventional precision strike is so good so that we need to go. That's the early trigger with which we could use nukes.

Jeffrey 18:47

So yes, so we have the thresholds. And so the thresholds that are presented, and I'm sure these are not all the thresholds, and we'll talk about whether these thresholds are really real or not. But that kind of – the decree isn't specific and like nor would you expect it to be. But the decree leaves it to people further down in the chain of command to kind of work out like, well, at what point is the attrition of the submarine fleet so substantial that you have to go?

And it's 20% of the ballistic missile submarines, 30% of the nuclear attack submarines – Three or more cruisers. I mean, this is assuming it all happens at once. I mean, because we're kind of there in Ukraine, right?

Aaron 19:33

I was about to say, yes. Yeah.

Jeffrey 19:35

I mean, there's a certain... Well, we'll come back to that. Three airfields or a simultaneous hit on Maine and Reserve coastal command centers. They actually have worked out numerical thresholds. Now, I think in practice, and I think you see this in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin doesn't have to follow the thresholds that his subordinates work out for him. You know, he can just decide like, no, this is the attack.

They only destroyed one of the submarines, but it's time to go before they get the rest of them. He could also decide to just. Take it a little bit longer and see how it goes. This is all premised on the idea that it's a major attack all at once. Obviously Ukraine plinking, you know the Russian black sea fleet and slowly a trading.

It doesn't, doesn't seem to rise to this level. But it's I mean, this is great reporting. We have some idea of how I think not Putin, who ultimately gets to make his own decision and maybe hasn't made up his mind and can't make up his mind until he's actually in the moment. But we at least know what people lower in the chain of command have served up in training materials for like what the magic number is.

And that's wild to me.

Aaron 20:51

How long do you think those training materials have been around? I know it's not in the thing, but like.

Jeffrey 20:56

Yeah, I mean, they say the documents date from 2008 to 2014.

Aaron 21:00

Right, but I don't assume that those numbers are changed from PowerPoint slides. I agree. Yeah, so I'm just curious how those thresholds are calculated and when they were calculated. Not like it matters, but I'm just curious.

Jeffrey 21:18

No, I think but I think it does matter because it's a little bit like when the Clinton administration got beat up over the nuclear posture review in 1994 and they decided to leave in place the Reagan administration's. I think it was a 1981 guidance on nuclear weapons policy, which called for prevailing in a protracted nuclear war against the Soviet Union, which is kind of weird, but like.

I mean, things how things get updated, how how if if those thresholds are very old, It might tell you something about how important those thresholds are to Putin, which is to say maybe he doesn't care. If those thresholds are updated every six months, then one has like a very different perspective. If those thresholds are presented to Putin and he signs off on them, I would look at this differently than if those thresholds are held at much lower levels and they will be presented to Putin on the bad day and he will be like, oh, really?

Did I agree to that? I don't.

Aaron 22:18

Yes, sir.

Jeffrey 22:18

You signed this degree here. Exactly. Really? I don't I don't remember that. I think we just we just don't know. But but still, it's it's a fascinating glimpse.

Aaron 22:29

And the other thing is. So this was happening at a different time period, obviously, in global relations, but I think the lessons and the information is still as valid. But how aware do you think Putin is when these exercises actually happen? My guess is not very. It's that these are just exercises that these units have to do to maintain their qualification or certification or whatever it is, the Russian equivalent, to fill out paperwork to go up the chain of command.

Yeah, I mean, I think...

Jeffrey 23:00

Anybody who has spent any time in the U.S. government knows that there are documents that get produced like this all the time. And a lot of them are – because they are training materials, they do have a kind of authoritative quality. But they also have a kind of anodyne lowest common denominator quality. And so it really depends on their value depends on what you're asking.

I think it is unquestionably useful to know how the Russian Navy trains its officers to think about nuclear weapons. That's really, really valuable. You know, just the problem is the person who is ultimately going to make the big decision is not a Russian naval officer. And he didn't get trained on these documents. And so I think we have to hold in our head both possibilities.

You know, this is actually the theme of my class on China's nuclear forces that I'm teaching this semester. Which is you can kind of try to look at all the different materials that are available to you, but you have to understand all of this stuff is mediated through politics. So I don't, my students listen, I don't want to say too much, but there's a big debate in the late 60s, early 70s about whether China is going to go for an ICBM force with big nuclear warheads or a regional force of shorter range missiles with smaller nuclear warheads.

And the people who get that wrong rely on, in part, captured doctrinal materials that were prepared for the PLA. And, you know, I think in retrospect, we know those materials were prepared by people who didn't know anything about nuclear weapons and weren't privy to thinking about nuclear weapons. And they just felt they needed to tell the soldiers something.

And, you know, so this was something. But this kind of stuff is valuable. It's useful. You have to analyze it. But I think it's not always on point for the question that we're really asking, which is, where is Vladimir Putin's limit in Ukraine?

Aaron 25:15

Well, I was going to flip the question on you because you're the – what's your title at the Center for Nonproliferation?

Jeffrey 25:22

I'm the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program, which I keep trying to get changed because it makes it weird when I talk about Russia or Iran or any of the other places that aren't in East Asia.

Aaron 25:35

But you have a background in China's nuclear forces. They were the target of the exercise here.

Jeffrey 25:40

Yeah, they were. They were.

Aaron 25:42

So I'm framing this through thinking about a NATO-American aerospace attack. Let's throw in the Navy attack on SSBNs, airfields, and all measures of mechanisms and deliveries of nuclear weapons from the Russian Federation. They were focused out east. What do you think the Chinese thresholds are for these things?

Jeffrey 26:00

Yeah, you know, it's funny. I mean, China has a no first use policy, which I think they believe. But I go back to my observation at the beginning of all this, which is I think no matter how they express it or frame it, every country ultimately has the same nuclear policy, which is it's hard to see the future.

I don't really know when I would use these things. Ideally, I would never have to use these things. And it's going to be a big freaking decision the day I do. And I don't really know what the conditions are going to be. But I'll know it when I see it. It's going to be really important. And so my guess is the Chinese probably have similar materials, like how many of their dual capable DF-26s can we hit before they're feeling vulnerable?

How many conventional strikes could we do on their other nuclear forces before they're feeling vulnerable? But again, like, To make a decision like this, I really think you have to imagine Xi Jinping sitting on the toilet in the morning, like, thinking about the world and his problems. And you have to sort of emphasize with him or, geez, you have to sort of empathize with him.

And I just think that's really hard. So, you know... Decker, who is the student I was having this conversation with about, is the student who found all the silos in China. It's really important to note that if you looked at all the training and other materials that came out of China prior to finding those silos, they all talked about how lousy silos were.

And so those training materials would not have been, I think, a good indicator of the strategic or policy shift. And now people are trying to come up with good strategic reasons that China's building all these silos. But my sneaking suspicion is it has a lot to do with politics and corruption. And it's probably not unrelated to the fact that the rocket force, rather, just had its leadership purged.

So, you know, you ask me, like, what are the Chinese thresholds? I'm sure there is a piece of paper somewhere in the system that has thresholds on it. I just am not sure that any of that's relevant to Xi Jinping, who, you know, I think, you know, is going to keep his own counsel on this.

Aaron 28:23

So we should wrap it up. But the last question is, so if those training documents sometimes are false in terms of conclusions and that if you read too much into them, perhaps that you'll get the wrong picture and you use the China example. Are we reassured for nothing? I mean, you and I wrote the article. I still think it's the article, right?

Not to toot our own horn, it is our podcast, but in a great publication called War on the Rocks about why deterrence is actually working.

Jeffrey 28:48

Poorly edited rag, I say. Yeah.

Aaron 28:52

But trying to figure out how to update it, I just don't have any updates. I think the piece stands on its own two legs. But what if we're wrong? Do you know what I mean? What if we're looking at these training days and we're getting false sense of assurance for exactly the reasons you just put out?

Jeffrey 29:05

Well, I think that's possible. I mean, the way I look at it is... We should not be surprised that the training materials look like the decree because Putin has Sergei Lavrov and RT to lie for him and to do propaganda. When he signs a decree, that's the beginning of a bureaucratic process. And so the decree is super vague and it says some stuff.

And then there are probably increasingly specific documents all the way down. I mean, he could just sign a different decree tomorrow. He can just decide that his – Decree doesn't apply to the situation he's facing. And so... On the one hand, I'm reassured in that there is nothing in these documents that represents a dramatic break in their policy.

I'm reassured that the general way I look at the world in terms of how documents represent reality isn't wildly off because I wouldn't expect Russia to have a secret nuclear policy that was very different than their open nuclear policy. You might expect a little tension, a little additional specificity, but they should basically be in harmony. But as you and I said, none of this works if it's a perfect mathematical calculation.

Aaron 30:24

Yeah, yeah, no.

Jeffrey 30:25

And honestly, what does 20% of the SSBN force mean? I have to go check. Do they have 10? Do they actually mean two boats? What if we sank two of their nine boats or two of their 11 boats? How do we count fractions? Do they round up? Do they round down? I think at some level... Yeah, we're maybe over being a little bit over reassured because, you know, if there's no risk that this all goes wrong, deterrence doesn't work.

Aaron 31:00

I was going to say, what if you hit a boat in dry dock or rather than the ones deployed? Is that contribute to the fraction? Is it the boats?

Jeffrey 31:06

What if you hit it? It doesn't sink and it limps home.

Aaron 31:16

I think the ambiguity is part of the. Yeah. It's a feature, not a bug. And again, I think if you're pushing these training documents down, just, you know, like the sort of the button, right? So that you're going to have some, I don't know, maybe 25 year old sailor who has to make the decision on which sort of, which weapon to use.

You want specificity there, right? Whereas when you're, you know, you don't want him or her to be like, you know, hold on, I got to get my grease pencil out. I got to get my iPhone out. I got to run the fractions. You know, he wants his best.

Jeffrey 31:45

Vandim needs to know how many dicks in the bag.

Other voice 31:52

This is two in a row for Vadim. He's back. Exactly. When Vadim is hanging out.

Jeffrey 31:56

Vadim's like, I have 100 dicks in bag. I am now down to 80 dicks. May I launch Iskander with nuclear warhead now? Like, yeah, go ahead, Vadim.

Aaron 32:05

Vadim has to swipe right, right? While also doing fractions. While also doing his bachelor party.

Jeffrey 32:13

I was going to say, just judging from Vadim's social media profile. Yeah. I mean, you got to keep it simple for Vadim.

Other voice 32:20

You got to.

Jeffrey 32:23

I mean, I'm sure he's a nice guy, but... Oh, my God, Vadim.

Other voice 32:27

I still think...

Aaron 32:29

I mean, that podcast was so long ago. I don't even think I was hosting on that. I think that was one of those where I was gone and you had a guest hosted and I listened to it.

Jeffrey 32:36

Yeah, that's how we got off the rail with Vadim in his bag of dicks. But anyway, yeah, I think no more than 10 to 15% of the bag of dicks can be traded before Vadim goes nuclear.

Aaron 32:49

That's just, that's where we are. It's the KSV corollary. Can you imagine coming to this podcast fresh and being like, who's Vadim and why does he have a bag of dicks? OG listeners will know. People have been with us from the beginning. And the last thing I wanted to say is, does the Aeroflot sort of like continuum still continue to hold up?

I say it does. And for those who have listened early in the Ukraine war when people were worried about escalation, I was reassured by Vladimir Putin meeting with the Aeroflot stewardesses.

Jeffrey 33:22

I agree. I made that point to someone the other day. That man, you can say he's paranoid, lost touch with reality because of all the COVID preparations, but I didn't see a mask when the stewardesses filed into his office.

Aaron 33:36

The entire thing was this guy locked down in COVID, went down rabbit holes about Ukrainian sort of nationalism, came out the other end, a man possessed to go retake Russian lands. And he wouldn't get close to people because he was afraid of catching COVID. And then literally a week after the war starts with the Aeroflot sanctions. I mean, he was one and a half inches away from two very attractive women sitting around a table of very attractive women chatting it up.

And I was like, you know what? This guy still has his faculties around him, wants to hang out, and I think we're going to be okay.

Jeffrey 34:12

Yeah. You know, I don't know. At the end of my Twitter thread, I posted Randy Newman's Putin, which I highly recommend a listen. And no matter what Randy Newman says, Putin loves the Putin girls.

Aaron 34:26

So does Vadim. And I think with that, we've gone off the rails. Is there anything else we need to hit here before we sign off the show? Nope. Just, you know, great reporting.

Jeffrey 34:37

Great reporting. We can quarrel about the about the interpretation. But let's not lose sight of of what a great what a great tranche of documents this is for understanding Russian nuclear policy and posture.

Aaron 34:51

It certainly fills in gaps in ways that Aeroflot and Vadim do not. It certainly just gets you around the edges. And so with that, if you want to know the backstory about Vadim, you're new, you want to know about the Aeroflot corollary, the perfect place to talk about that is in our Slack channel. To join that, patreon.com slash acwpodcast.

$3 gets you a membership if you're a student, $5 if you're not. It's the best deal in town. It's less than a Starbucks deal. Coffee in most cases and you can find out get in on the jokes that you hear on this podcast every week patreon.com slash ACW podcast and with that Jeffrey cheers to you and another podcast bye