“Hope the Russians Love Their Children Too”: Russian Public Support for the Use of Nuclear Weapons after the Invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, experts have expressed concerns that Moscow’s nuclear saber-rattling may have eroded the “nuclear taboo” and led to increased support for the use of nuclear weapons in Russian society. To investigate public attitudes toward nuclear use in Russia, we conducted a preregistered survey experiment on a representative sample of the Russian population. Our results show that despite significant shifts in the regional security environment, the Kremlin’s belligerent rhetoric, and calls for nuclear strikes from politicians, experts, and journalists, public support for using nuclear weapons against NATO has remained virtually unchanged post-invasion. We suggest that this remarkable stability of the “atomic aversion” may stem from two countervailing factors: normalization of the idea of nuclear use in Russian society and deterrence through heightened concerns about NATO’s retaliation. Our findings also demonstrate that Russian citizens disapprove of nuclear weapon use similarly in scenarios involving a conflict over Crimea with Ukraine and a Russia–NATO conflict in the Baltics. However, we observed a somewhat stronger public approval of a demonstrative nuclear explosion, a policy option recently proposed by Russian military experts. Our findings contribute to the scholarly literature on the strength of the nuclear nonuse norm in non-Western countries and to ongoing policy debates regarding domestic constraints on the Kremlin’s decision to use nuclear weapons to achieve foreign policy objectives.

Resumen

Tras la invasión a gran escala de Ucrania por parte de Rusia, los expertos han expresado su preocupación con respecto a que el ruido en torno a las armas nucleares por parte de Moscú pueda haber erosionado el “tabú nuclear” y provocado un mayor apoyo al uso de armas nucleares en la sociedad rusa. Con el fin de investigar las actitudes públicas con respecto al uso nuclear en Rusia, llevamos a cabo un experimento de encuesta prerregistrado sobre una muestra representativa de la población rusa. Nuestros resultados demuestran que, a pesar de los cambios significativos en el ámbito de seguridad regional, la retórica beligerante del Kremlin y los llamamientos a ataques nucleares por parte de políticos, expertos y periodistas, el apoyo público al uso de armas nucleares contra la OTAN se ha mantenido prácticamente sin cambios después de la invasión. Sugerimos que este notable nivel de estabilidad de la “aversión atómica” puede deberse a dos factores compensatorios: la normalización de la idea del uso nuclear en la sociedad rusa y la disuasión debido a unas mayores preocupaciones con respecto a las represalias por parte de la OTAN. Nuestras conclusiones también demuestran que los ciudadanos rusos desaprueban el uso de armas nucleares de manera similar en escenarios que involucran un conflicto con Ucrania en relación con Crimea y un conflicto entre Rusia y la OTAN en los países bálticos. Sin embargo, observamos un nivel de aprobación pública algo más fuerte para una explosión nuclear demostrativa, que es una opción política propuesta recientemente por expertos militares rusos. Nuestras conclusiones contribuyen a la literatura académica en materia de la fortaleza de la norma de no uso nuclear en países no occidentales, así como a los debates políticos en curso con respecto a las restricciones internas contra la decisión del Kremlin de usar armas nucleares con el fin de lograr sus objetivos de política exterior.

Résumé

Après l'invasion en bonne et due forme de l'Ukraine par la Russie, les experts ont confié craindre que la démonstration de force nucléaire de Moscou n'ait érodé le “tabou nucléaire” et provoqué une augmentation du soutien à l'utilisation d'armes nucléaires au sein de la société russe. Pour analyser les attitudes du public concernant l'utilisation de l'arme nucléaire en Russie, nous avons mené une expérience de sondage pré-enregistrée sur un échantillon représentatif de la population russe. D'après nos résultats, malgré des transformations importantes du contexte de sécurité régional, la rhétorique belliqueuse du Kremlin et les appels aux frappes nucléaires de politiques, d'experts et de journalistes, le soutien public à l'utilisation d'armes nucléaires à l'encontre de l'OTAN n'a quasiment pas changé après l'invasion. Nous avançons que cette stabilité remarquable de “l'aversion atomique” pourrait procéder de deux facteurs contradictoires: la normalisation de l'idée du recours à l'arme nucléaire dans la société russe et la dissuasion par le renforcement des craintes de représailles de l'OTAN. Nos conclusions montrent par ailleurs que les citoyens russes désapprouvent aussi l'utilisation de l'arme nucléaire dans des scénarios impliquant un conflit relatif à la Crimée avec l'Ukraine ou un conflit entre la Russie et l'OTAN dans les pays baltes. Néanmoins, nous observons une approbation publique un peu plus forte à l'endroit d'une explosion nucléaire éloquente, une option politique proposée récemment par les experts militaires russes. Nos conclusions viennent enrichir la littérature académique sur la force de la norme de non-utilisation de l'arme nucléaire dans les pays non occidentaux. Elles contribuent aussi aux débats politiques actuels concernant les contraintes nationales qui pèsent sur la décision du Kremlin d'utiliser l'arme nucléaire afin d'atteindre ses objectifs de politique étrangère.

How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?

There is no monopoly on common sense

On either side of the political fence

We share the same biology, regardless of ideology

Believe me when I say to you

I hope the Russians love their children too

–– Sting, “Russians” (1985)

Introduction

More than three decades after the Cold War ended, the Russo-Ukrainian war has brought back the fear of nuclear escalation to the forefront of world politics (Bollfrass and Herzog 2022; Arceneaux 2023; Lieber and Press 2023; Tannenwald 2023; Vicente, Sinovets, and Theron 2023; Herzog 2024; Horschig and Williams 2024). While the primary aim of Russian nuclear signaling has been to shape decision-making in Western capitals (Sinovets and Shultz 2023), some scholars suggest that the normalization of nuclear discourse has also significantly impacted the Russian public’s support for the military employment of nuclear weapons. For example, a leading expert on Russian strategic culture proposed that the “recurring belligerent nuclear rhetoric—official and unofficial alike—has somewhat eroded the nuclear taboo,” “normalized nuclear weapons in the public’s consciousness,” and, consequently, “the Russian public appears to have become more comfortable with the idea of using atomic weapons” (Adamsky 2023).

In the current international security environment, increased public support for nuclear use could have serious consequences. Although public opinion is not the sole factor determining whether Russia employs nuclear weapons, it is arguably an important piece of the puzzle. Earlier scholarship has found substantial evidence that the Kremlin closely monitors the fluctuation in public mood and considers domestic attitudes as a relevant factor in its decision-making in foreign policy (Efimova and Strebkov 2020; Sherlock 2020). Furthermore, the increased public support for nuclear strikes could enhance the credibility of the Russian nuclear threats and encourage the Kremlin to adopt more assertive nuclear signaling (Adamsky 2023). Given the risks and potentially catastrophic consequences of Russia violating the “nuclear taboo” (Tannenwald 2024), investigating domestic support for nuclear escalation in today’s security environment is critical for contemporary scholarship and policymaking alike.

However, so far, no studies have investigated Russian public attitudes toward the use of nuclear weapons after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We propose that after February 2022, countervailing factors may have conceivably shaped citizens’ support for nuclear strikes. On the one hand, the increased exposure to the Kremlin’s belligerent nuclear rhetoric through Russian media might have shifted societal views on the moral appropriateness of nuclear use in today’s world (normalization). On the other hand, the resolve demonstrated by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries and the discussions of the possibility of a direct conflict with the West may have heightened public concern about NATO’s response and the corresponding likelihood of nuclear war (deterrence). If the normalization factor prevails, we would expect to observe an increased Russian willingness to support the use of nuclear weapons in conflict; if the deterrence factor has a larger impact, we should see the effect in the opposite direction. However, we also theorize another plausible development: that these two countervailing factors balance out, resulting in no significant change in the Russian public’s support for nuclear use on average.

To investigate Russian public support for nuclear use empirically, we conducted a preregistered survey experiment on a large, representative sample of the Russian population in June 2024. Building on the original design of our preinvasion study of Russian attitudes toward nuclear strikes against NATO (Smetana and Onderco 2023), participants in the experiment were randomly assigned different versions of a hypothetical scenario in which Russia faced a dilemma of either escalating to the nuclear level or accepting an imminent defeat in a conventional conflict. To examine whether public support for nuclear use changed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we compared the level of agreement with and preference for a nuclear strike in 2021 and 2024. Additionally, we included new treatments to investigate the differences in public support for nuclear use against NATO versus Ukraine and for direct nuclear use versus a demonstrative nuclear explosion. Finally, we explored the relative importance of different concerns about nuclear weapon use expressed by the participants in our experiment.

Our results demonstrate that despite profound changes in the regional security environment and frequent nuclear saber-rattling by Russian politicians, experts, and media, the proportion of the Russian public that would approve of a nuclear “escalate-to-deescalate” strike against the West virtually has not changed over the past 3 years. A more sensitive analysis of the level of support on a six-point scale nevertheless allowed us to identify a trend toward a slightly increased aversion to nuclear use.¹ Furthermore, we show that the Russian public was as likely to disapprove of nuclear use in scenarios involving fighting over Crimea with Ukraine as in scenarios of a Russia–NATO conflict in the Baltics. While we observed a slightly higher approval of a demonstrative explosion compared to direct strikes against military targets, even those actions were supported by a minority of the participants in our study. Finally, we show that the relative importance of public concerns about violating the nuclear nonuse norm has partially shifted after the Russian invasion of Ukraine: The Russian public now appears less concerned about the immorality of nuclear use, yet more worried about the possibility of nuclear and conventional retaliation from NATO. This finding supports the claim that countervailing factors explain why we observe little change in overall Russian public support for nuclear use after the invasion of Ukraine, with the deterrence factor possibly playing a slightly more significant role than the normalization factor.

Our findings make an important contribution to the recent wave of survey-based research investigating public attitudes toward nuclear use (Press, Sagan, and Valentino 2013; Sagan and Valentino 2017; Haworth, Sagan, and Valentino 2019; Carpenter and Montgomery 2020; Rathbun and Stein 2020; Koch and Wells 2021; Smetana and Vranka 2021; Allison, Herzog, and Ko 2022; Bowen, Goldfien, and Graham 2022; Dill, Sagan, and Valentino 2022; Horschig 2022; Smetana and Onderco 2022; Smetana, Vranka, and Rosendorf 2022; Koch 2023; Schwartz 2024; Smetana, Vranka, and Rosendorf 2024; Sagan and Valentino 2025; for recent reviews, see Smetana and Wunderlich 2021; Goddard and Larkin 2025). Although this body of scholarship has yielded many valuable insights over the past decade, it has primarily focused on the populations of the United States and other Western countries (for notable exceptions providing non-Western perspectives, see Sukin 2020; Egel and Hines 2021; Ju and Byun 2024). The findings of our study also contribute to broader political science scholarship examining attitudinal changes following major foreign policy shocks, including wars (Mueller 1991; Page and Shapiro 1992; Holsti 2004; Onderco, Smetana, and Etienne 2023).

We proceed as follows. First, we outline the basic contours of the domestic debate on nuclear weapons use in Russia following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Second, we lay out our theoretical expectations concerning Russian public attitudes and formulate our hypotheses. Third, we introduce the research design of our study. Fourth, we present the results of the preregistered statistical tests, as well as the additional exploratory analyses. We conclude by summarizing our key findings, discussing their scholarly contribution, highlighting the broader policy implications, and sketching promising avenues for future research.

Russian Domestic Debate on Nuclear Weapon Use

Right at the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, President Putin ordered “the deterrence forces of the Russian army” to be transferred “to a special mode of combat duty” (Roth et al. 2022). These televised statements were the start of the long-winded attempt to employ nuclear threats in order to signal Russian resolve and increase the perception of escalation risks in Western capitals (Horovitz and Stolze 2023). When aimed at foreign audiences, the broader goals of this strategy include preventing direct military intervention by NATO countries as well as limiting shipments of advanced Western military technology to Ukraine (Sinovets and Shultz 2023; Alberque and Hoffmann 2024; Williams et al. 2024).

For Russian leadership, bolstering domestic legitimacy through the repeated exhortation of the nation’s nuclear arsenal has been an important element of domestic propaganda even before the start of the war (Deriglazova and Rozhanovskaya 2020; Götz 2022). Arguably, the post-invasion nuclear threats made by political elites were not a new development but fit a previous pattern of Russian officials making generally threatening but unspecific statements (Wachs 2023, 182). The strong, muscular nuclear rhetoric used to cater to domestic audiences has translated to a view that the Russian public held particularly positive views of the nation’s nuclear arsenal—or, as succinctly noted by Sokov (2015, 204), “Russians like their nuclear weapons.”

However, since the start of the Russian full-scale invasion, domestic debates about the potential use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine and its Western backers have intensified. On late-night TV shows, Russian experts have been debating various scenarios of unleashing nuclear weapons upon Western countries, including the United Kingdom (Childs 2022) and the Netherlands (Cole 2024), two of the most fervent supporters of Ukraine in Western Europe. On other occasions, guests attending popular TV programs discussed “annihilating Poland in ten minutes” (Amalaraj 2024). Among the high-profile politicians, former Russian president Medvedev has repeatedly issued blatant nuclear threats, most recently noting that “nobody today can rule out the conflict’s transition to its final stage” and stressing that “Moscow’s nuclear threats over Ukraine are no bluff” (Reuters 2024).

Some of the most belligerent nuclear rhetoric comes from the Russian expert community. For example, a foreign policy expert from a think tank close to the Kremlin recently suggested a demonstrative nuclear explosion to instill fear of a nuclear war in Western policymakers (Suslov 2024). In her comprehensive review of the Russian expert debate based on local sources, Wachs (2023, 188–90) concluded that the most significant shift toward belligerent threats happened among Russian policy analysts; by contrast, in the leading Russian military journal Voennaya Mysl, the tone of the debate has become increasingly threatening, but the actual content has shifted to a significantly lesser extent.

The developments in the Russo-Ukrainian war have also sparked a domestic debate about the need to change the doctrine to reflect new developments in the regional security environment (Welch 2024). For example, Sergei Karaganov, a well-connected Russian strategist, proposed that Russia must decrease the nuclear threshold in its strategy to reestablish deterrence by restoring the Western fear of nuclear weapons (Karaganov 2023). A long-debated doctrinal change was eventually adopted with language that appears to somewhat lower the threshold for nuclear use (Kimball 2024).

In the course of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the Kremlin also took some additional steps in its broader nuclear policy that could have contributed to the change in public perception of nuclear weapons––and nuclear risks. After almost three decades, Russian nuclear weapons would once again be deployed to neighboring Belarus (Horovitz and Wachs 2024). The two countries have also organized joint drills simulating the use of nonstrategic nuclear weapons (Афанасенко 2024). In 2023, Putin suspended Russian participation in the New START, the last remaining arms control treaty limiting the US and Russian nuclear arsenals (Bugos 2023). Moscow has also withdrawn its ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, prompting concerns about the resumption of nuclear testing (Podvig 2024).

In sum, more than three decades after the end of the Cold War, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has led to a visible shift in public discourse about nuclear weapons. So far, however, scholars have not investigated whether this increased salience of nuclear weapons in the Russian domestic debate has gone hand in hand with shifts in support for the use of nuclear weapons among Russian citizens.

Theoretical Expectations and Hypotheses

Earlier survey experiments have repeatedly demonstrated that the level of public support for nuclear use partially depends on the strategic context in which a given state considers violating the decades-long tradition of restraint (Press, Sagan, and Valentino 2013; Sagan and Valentino 2017; Dill, Sagan, and Valentino 2022). While there is already scholarly research on Russian attitudes toward nuclear strikes against NATO (Smetana and Onderco 2023), it was conducted prior to Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the largest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War that is widely seen as a turning point for the region (Bunde 2022). Scholars have previously found that major shocks in foreign policy, and wars in particular, frequently have a significant impact on mass public attitudes (Mueller 1991; Page and Shapiro 1992; Onderco, Smetana, and Etienne 2023).

Notably, although the current Russo-Ukrainian war has been fought as a conventional conflict involving artillery barrages, drone strikes, and infantry attacks, the overall conflict dynamics have been closely linked to Russian nuclear threats against the West and debates over the possibility of nuclear escalation (Horovitz and Wachs 2022; Sethi 2022; Arceneaux 2023; Arndt, Horovitz, and Onderco 2023). In the previous section, we discussed how this belligerent nuclear rhetoric became more salient in the Russian domestic debate after February 2022. Existing scholarship has repeatedly demonstrated that elite messaging can shape public views and preferences, including those related to foreign and security policy (Guisinger and Saunders 2017; Golby, Feaver, and Dropp 2018; Alley 2022) or even support for nuclear weapon use (Sagan and Valentino 2025). Some of the effects of top-down “elite cues” have also been observed in the context of Russian politics; for instance, one experimental study conducted in Russia has demonstrated the significant impact of Putin’s rhetoric on Russian public support for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine (Krishnarajan and Tolstrup 2023).

Building on this research, it is plausible that the increased salience of nuclear weapons in world politics in general––and in the Russian domestic debate in particular––has had an observable impact on the views of ordinary Russians. But in which direction would such a change occur? In the following subsection, we theorize the logic of normalization and deterrence as countervailing factors potentially leading to divergent shifts in Russian public support for nuclear use and propose hypotheses corresponding to these developments.²

Hypotheses on Post-Invasion Shifts in Support for Nuclear Use against NATO

We propose that, after February 2022, two main countervailing developments may have plausibly shaped Russian public support for the use of nuclear weapons against NATO. The first development is based on the presumed normalization of the idea of nuclear use in the minds of ordinary Russians. If Russian aversion to nuclear use is driven, at least partially, by normative considerations (Smetana and Onderco 2023), then the elite discourse about the appropriateness of nuclear use in the new strategic environment could have shifted public expectations about what is normatively acceptable conduct in international affairs.

To this end, existing psychological and sociological literature supports the idea that the strength of collectively held normative standards largely depends on the social expectations of individuals––and that these micro-level expectations can be altered. For example, Bicchieri (2005, 2017) argues that the change in empirical (what one thinks others do) and normative (what one thinks others think one should do) expectations regarding given behaviors is a key mechanism leading to a shift in the perceptions of applicable social norms. She also shows that media often serve as effective facilitators of change in individuals’ beliefs and social expectations (Bicchieri 2017, chap. 4).

More generally, elite portrayals of nuclear use as a potentially appropriate practice in the new strategic context could counteract stigmatization processes that have separated nuclear from conventional weapons and driven the development of the nuclear taboo in world politics (Tannenwald 2005). What was once seen as a deviant practice is discursively reconstructed in the public debate as a legitimate behavior for actors who find themselves in the situation Russia faces at this moment.³ Ultimately, the normalization of nuclear use in the public discourse could lead to the weakening of the nuclear taboo in Russian society and, in turn, decrease public aversion to the use of nuclear weapons.⁴

There is, however, potentially a countervailing mechanism in play: the fear of retaliation based on the logic of deterrence. In Russia, the war in Ukraine has been explicitly framed by the Kremlin as part of the broader conflict with NATO and the “collective West” (Washington Post 2022). After the full-scale invasion in February 2022, NATO countries went to great lengths to demonstrate willingness and capability to defend “every inch of NATO territory” (Reuters 2023), while supporting Ukraine through military assistance, intelligence sharing, and the imposition of economic sanctions on Moscow (Lanoszka and Becker 2023). The United States has repeatedly signaled that any nuclear use would cross the red line (Biden 2022) and would “be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia” (CBS 2022).

As a result, the demonstration of NATO’s resolve may have changed public perception of the nature of potential Western response to Russian nuclear use. The success of deterrence signaling could have been further amplified by the renewed emphasis on the threat of apocalyptic nuclear war in the Russian media. Evidence from Western Europe has already shown increased levels of anxiety in connection with the threat of nuclear war after the invasion of Ukraine (Prazeres et al. 2023; Riad et al. 2023). This phenomenon, well-known from the Cold War era as “nuclear anxiety” (Smith 1988) or “atomic anxiety” (Sauer 2015), may significantly impact ordinary Russians, who might now prefer a more cautious approach to nuclear policy to prevent further emotional distress rather than resorting to belligerent escalation. Ultimately, the cost-benefit deterrence logic operating among the general public could have increased public aversion to the use of nuclear weapons.

Our preregistered hypotheses generally align with these two potential developments. Hypothesis H_1a suggests that Russian public support for the use of nuclear weapons in a military conflict with NATO increased after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine––a dynamic we would likely see if the logic of normalization prevailed over deterrence in Russian society. Conversely, hypothesis H_1b proposes that public support for nuclear use decreased after the invasion––a development we would likely observe if the deterrence logic had prevailed over normalization among Russian citizens.

However, we might also observe another plausible development: that these two countervailing factors balance out, resulting in no significant change in the Russian public’s support for nuclear use on average. This would correspond to the null hypothesis that there has been no discernible post-invasion shift in public attitudes. Changes in the perceived concerns about the morality of nuclear weapon use and the threat of NATO’s retaliation could then provide further evidence that these potential developments are connected with the countervailing normalization/deterrence logic, rather than the irresponsiveness of the general public to the elite messaging and the shifts in the broader strategic context.⁵

Hypotheses on the Ukraine Scenarios

We have explicitly linked the hypotheses discussed above with Russian public views on the use of nuclear weapons in a military conflict with NATO. However, after February 2022, experts on military strategy frequently highlight another plausible scenario of a nuclear escalation in the region: a limited Russian nuclear strike against Ukraine intended to salvage the Kremlin’s faltering conventional campaign (Gannon 2022). Numerous Western officials expressed grave concerns about Putin resorting to nuclear use after the Ukrainian successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast in September 2022 and what many saw as a potential collapse of Russian forces in the southern Kherson region (Sciutto 2024; Woodward 2024). To date, scholars have not investigated Russian public support for nuclear escalation in such a scenario.

In this scenario, the normalization logic should operate similarly to the NATO conflict scenario: if the public changed its general view on the moral appropriateness of nuclear use, the identity of the victim of a nuclear strike should not matter all that much. However, if we base our theoretical expectations on consequentialist deterrence concerns, public support for using a nuclear weapon against Ukraine should be somewhat higher than for nuclear strikes against NATO. Ukraine remains a nonnuclear weapon state, is not protected by NATO’s nuclear umbrella, and has significantly more limited options for military retaliation. Accordingly, we preregistered hypothesis H₂, which posits that the Russian public is more likely to support nuclear use against Ukraine than against NATO.

Finally, some experts suggest that instead of launching a direct nuclear strike against a military or civilian target on Ukrainian territory, the Kremlin might first resort to detonating a nuclear weapon in an unpopulated area to demonstrate its resolve and coerce Kyiv and its Western backers into submission (Lin 2022). A prominent Russian nuclear expert from a think tank close to the Russian government recently advocated for such a nuclear demonstration with the argument that “[t]he political and psychological effect of a nuclear mushroom cloud, which will be broadcast live on all TV channels in the world, will hopefully restore to Western politicians the one thing that prevented wars between great powers after 1945 and which they have now mostly lost—the fear of a nuclear war” (Suslov 2024).

Since a nuclear demonstration would cause limited casualties and environmental damage, it could be seen as more morally acceptable by the public. As Goddard and Larkin (2025) recently noted, the normative dimension of nuclear nonuse is partly rooted in bright-line taboo logic and partly in the noncombatant immunity norm, which addresses harm to civilians in war. Unlike a direct military strike, a nuclear demonstration would likely avoid causing civilian harm disproportionate to military objectives. For similar reasons, the public strike might also perceive a nuclear demonstration as less escalatory than a direct strike, thereby partially alleviating concerns about NATO’s military retaliation. As such, we preregistered hypothesis H₃ that the Russian public is more likely to support a demonstrative nuclear explosion than direct military use of nuclear weapons.

Research Design

Building on our theoretical expectations, we designed a survey experiment to investigate support for nuclear weapon use in the general population of the Russian Federation.⁶ To enable a direct comparison between current Russian public attitudes and preinvasion data (hypotheses H_1a/H_1b), we adapted a hypothetical scenario of the NATO–Russia conflict from our study conducted in 2021 (Smetana and Onderco 2023). To address H₂ and H₃, we supplemented this scenario with two original vignettes presenting similar dilemmas about nuclear use in the context of the war in Ukraine. We preregistered our study plan prior to collecting the data.⁷

In the experiment, we randomly assigned the participants to treatment groups that were presented with one of the versions of a hypothetical scenario. In treatment α (“nuclear strike against NATO”), the participants read about a NATO–Russia military conflict triggered by Russian intervention in the Baltics. This scenario corresponded to the “limited nuclear” condition A in the aforementioned 2021 study.⁸ The vignette described a proposal made by Russian generals to use a single nuclear weapon against a NATO military base in Poland as a way of demonstrating resolve and forcing NATO states to accept peace terms favorable to Russia. As in the original version, we explicitly stated that the Russian army risked a military defeat without the nuclear strike. However, we also noted that the strike would likely result in a high number of civilian fatalities as collateral damage.

In treatment β (“nuclear strike against Ukraine”), we described a comparable dilemma in a scenario of a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive that had driven Russian forces out of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. In this scenario, the Ukrainian army now advanced to threaten Crimea, a Ukrainian region illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. As in treatment α, it was noted that without resorting to a nuclear strike on a military base in Ukraine, Russia risked defeat and would have to withdraw from Crimea.

In treatment γ (“nuclear demonstration against Ukraine”), we described a scenario largely identical to treatment β. However, unlike in β, the proposal of the Russian generals in treatment γ involved a demonstrative nuclear detonation over an unpopulated area in the Black Sea instead of a direct nuclear strike against a military target.

After reading the assigned scenario, the participants indicated their agreement with using a nuclear weapon in that situation on a six-point scale. Consistent with the 2021 study, we used a dichotomized response to this item (agree/disagree) as our outcome variable for subsequent hypothesis testing.

In turn, we asked the participants how important, on a five-point scale, the following concerns were for deciding whether they agreed with nuclear use: the immorality of nuclear use, civilian casualties, NATO’s nuclear retaliation, NATO’s conventional retaliation, reputational costs, and setting of a dangerous precedent in world politics. These concerns align with key explanations for the emergence and persistence of the “nuclear taboo” (Tannenwald 1999, 2007) or the “tradition of nonuse” (Sagan 2004; Paul 2009; Press, Sagan, and Valentino 2013; see Smetana and Wunderlich 2021 for a scholarly review). We used the responses to these items for subsequent exploratory analyses. In particular, we examined the shifts in the concerns about the immorality of nuclear use and NATO’s retaliation as proxies for normalization and deterrence logics, respectively.

As an alternative outcome measure, we asked the participants about their relative preference for a nuclear option over a conventional strike in treatments α and β, with four single-choice options: nuclear, conventional, both are the same, I do not know. In treatment γ, we asked instead about their preference for a demonstrative detonation and a direct nuclear strike on a military base.

To ensure meaningful comparability between the 2021 and 2024 samples, we included several items as control variables. One such item was the approval of the current Russian leadership, a political characteristic previously found to be strongly associated with support for nuclear use.⁹ We also included gender and age as key sociodemographic characteristics.¹⁰

The overall logic of our research design is summarized in Figure 1. To test H_1a/H_1b, we analyzed the difference in binary agreement with the nuclear strike and preference for the nuclear option between treatments A (2021 survey wave) and α (2024 survey wave). To test H₂, we investigated the corresponding differences between treatments α and β. To test H₃, we analyzed the difference in binary agreement with a nuclear strike between β and γ and the preference for a demonstrative detonation over a direct strike in γ.

Due to the sensitivity of conducting surveys on foreign policy issues in Russia under the current autocratic regime and the repressive domestic legislation enacted after the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we dedicated an extensive preparation period to consult the ethical, security, and legal aspects of conducting the experiment with Levada Center, an independent local polling agency. Our primary aim was to ensure that the participants were not exposed to personal danger and that all data remained strictly anonymized. The ethical aspects of our research, including the informed consent form and the survey debrief, are discussed in detail in online appendix 6.

Results

We conducted our study in cooperation with the local independent polling agency, Levada Center, in June 2024. The experiment was part of a larger omnibus survey administered through face-to-face interviews on a stratified probability sample representative of the adult population of the Russian Federation. Our final sample comprised 1,627 participants drawn from 137 urban and rural settlements across 50 Russian regions.¹¹

Tests of Preregistered Hypotheses

To investigate whether public support for nuclear use in Russia has shifted post-invasion (H_1a/H_1b), we first conducted a binomial logistic regression. The survey wave (2021 = A/2024 = α) served as a categorical predictor, with gender, age, and leadership approval as covariates. We used dichotomized agreement with nuclear use as a categorical outcome measure with two levels (0 = disagree/1 = agree). As we show in the left panel in Figure 2, the predictive margins for the two survey waves were nearly identical (p = 0.954, OR = 1.01), showing a 28.3 percent probability of agreeing with nuclear use against NATO in treatment A and a 28.5 percent probability in treatment α.¹²

To examine whether the Russian preference for nuclear use has changed since 2021, we conducted a corresponding multinomial logistic regression, with the preference for the nuclear option as a categorical outcome measure with four levels: 1 = nuclear strike, 2 = conventional strike, 3 = both are the same, and 4 = I don’t know. The right panel of Figure 2 shows that the distribution of responses remained largely consistent across the two survey waves, with the preference for the nuclear option being 6.2 percent in treatment A and 8.3 percent in α. There was no statistically significant difference in the relative preference for the nuclear option compared to any of the three remaining options between the two 2021 and 2024 survey waves.

Given that A (agreement) = α (agreement) and A (preference) = α (preference), we reject both hypothesis H_1a, which proposed an increase in public support for nuclear use after the invasion of Ukraine, and hypothesis H_1b, which anticipated a decrease. This provides empirical evidence for the null hypothesis that, on balance, the support for nuclear use among ordinary Russian citizens has not shifted post-invasion.

To investigate whether public support for nuclear use differs for strikes against NATO and against Ukraine (H₂), we conducted a logistic regression. We used the condition (NATO = α/Ukraine = β) as a categorical predictor in the model, with gender, age, and leadership approval as covariates. The dichotomized agreement with nuclear use served as an outcome measure. As we show in the left panel in Figure 3, the predictive margins for the two conditions were nearly identical (p = 0.838, OR = 0.968). The probability of agreeing with nuclear use was 29.9 percent in α (NATO) and 29.2 percent in β (Ukraine).

To examine whether the preference for nuclear use differed between the two 2024 scenarios, we conducted a corresponding multinomial logistic regression with preference for the nuclear option as an outcome measure. The right panel of Figure 3 once again shows a similar distribution of responses in the two treatments, with predicted probabilities of preferring a nuclear option at 8.9 percent for α and 9.4 percent for β. As in the previous test, we observed no statistically significant differences in a relative preference for the nuclear option across conditions.

Given that α (agreement) = β (agreement) and α (preference) = β (preference), we reject hypothesis H₂ that the Russian public is more likely to support nuclear use against Ukraine than NATO. As such, our findings support the null hypothesis that the level of public support for nuclear use in Russia remains stable regardless of who the victim of the nuclear strike is.

To investigate whether Russians are more supportive of a demonstrative nuclear explosion or a direct nuclear strike against a military target (H₃), we conducted a logistic regression. The condition (demonstrative explosion = γ/direct nuclear use = β) served as a predictor, gender, age, and leadership approval as covariates, and dichotomized agreement with nuclear use as an outcome measure in the model. As shown in the left panel in Figure 4, participants in our study were slightly more likely to agree with a nuclear demonstration in γ (36.1 percent) than a direct strike in β (29.1 percent). The difference was statistically significant (p = 0.031, OR = 0.724).

To assess whether the public also prefers a nuclear demonstration over direct use, we plotted the predictive margins for strike preference in treatment γ. The right panel of Figure 4 shows a small, statistically insignificant (p = 0.464) difference between a preference for demonstrative (21.8 percent) and direct (24.2 percent) nuclear strikes.

Since γ (agreement) > β (agreement) but γ (preference) = β (preference), we have gained partial support for our hypothesis H₃, which anticipated that the Russian public would be more supportive of a demonstrative nuclear explosion than a direct nuclear strike on a military target in Ukraine. A small percentage of the Russian population that opposes direct military use would likely agree with exploding a weapon demonstratively as a signal of resolve, but the overall proportion of those who would prefer this option and those who would rather go “all the way” is ultimately comparable. A clear majority of our participants indicated that they either did not know what they would prefer or felt both options were equally viable.

Exploratory Analysis of Posttreatment Concerns

Next, we explored the concerns that our participants reported regarding the possibility of Russian nuclear use in our experiment. We mean-centered the responses for each item and conducted separate ANOVA tests with survey wave (2021 = A/2024 = α) as a categorical predictor and gender, age, and leadership approval as covariates. We used mean values for individual concerns as outcome measures.

The left panel of Figure 5 shows that concern about civilian casualties dominated public reasoning in both survey waves. In contrast, the concern about reputational costs was clearly the least important. However, we can see some discernible shifts from 2021 to 2024: The Russian public now appears more concerned about both nuclear (F_1,752 = 17.30, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.0225) and conventional (F_1,752 = 9.54, p = 0.002, η_p² = 0.0125) retaliation from NATO, in line with the deterrence logic discussed in the theoretical section. Conversely, the citizens now appear less concerned about the immorality of nuclear use (F_1,752 = 9.85, p = 0.002, η_p² = 0.0129), in line with normalization mechanism.

We then performed parallel analyses with condition (NATO = α/Ukraine = β) as a predictor. The right panel in Figure 5 shows that the concern about civilian casualties still dominates, but it is relatively more important in the Ukraine scenario than in the NATO scenario (F_1,803 = 9.52, p = 0.002, η_p² = 0.0117). Conversely, participants in our study were more concerned about both nuclear (F_1,803 = 12.21, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.015) and conventional (F_1,803 = 6.99, p = 0.008, η_p² = 0.0086) retaliation in the NATO scenario than in the Ukraine scenario.¹³

Additional Analyses

In response to comments and suggestions received during the peer-review process, we performed a set of additional statistical analyses. Although these were not preregistered, they allowed us to gain further insights into Russian public views on nuclear weapon use after the invasion of Ukraine.

In the first step, we repeated the tests for the three main hypotheses (H_1a/b, H₂, H₃) using a six-point ordinal scale (1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree) rather than a binary outcome measure (0 = disagree/1 = agree). Although binary outcome measures are more commonly used in studies of this type because they allow for intuitive interpretation of substantive effect sizes (see, e.g., Press, Sagan, and Valentino 2013; Dill, Sagan, and Valentino 2022; Smetana and Onderco 2023), the longer ordinal scale enables the detection of smaller shifts in our participants’ attitudes.¹⁴

Figure 6 shows the results of the three tests. For H₂ (NATO/Ukraine scenarios) and H₃ (demonstrative/direct strike scenarios), we managed to replicate earlier findings: There was no statistically significant difference between support for nuclear use against NATO and Ukraine (p = 0.887), and there was a significantly higher agreement with demonstrative than direct strike (p = 0.037). However, for H₁, the results diverged from the binomial regression: On a six-point scale, participants were less likely to agree with nuclear use in 2024 than in 2021 (p = 0.002). The most visible shift has been in the “strongly disagree” category, with participants being significantly more likely to select it in the post-invasion survey wave than before the invasion (more than a 10-percentage-point probability increase from 38 percent to 49 percent). This suggests that even though the proportion of Russians who approved of nuclear use remained virtually the same post-invasion, the public is now feeling more strongly about disagreeing with doing so. These findings support H_1b, which anticipated a decrease in public support for the use of nuclear weapons.

Next, we investigated whether there was an interaction effect between the survey wave factor (2021/2024) and the participants’ approval of the Russian leadership. As one of the reviewers of this paper rightly noted, it is reasonable to expect that the Kremlin’s nuclear messaging normalizing nuclear use would have the strongest impact on supporters of the current Russian government. As we show in online appendix 10, we found no interaction effect with respect to the support for nuclear use.¹⁵

However, when performing similar tests for other analyses reported in this paper, we found an intriguing interaction between survey wave and the leadership approval related to the public concerns about nuclear retaliation (F_1,748 = 2.75, p < 0.028, η_p² = 0.0144). As we demonstrated in the previous subsection, Russians have generally become more concerned about the threat of NATO’s nuclear retaliation after the invasion of Ukraine. Figure 7 shows that this effect was mainly driven by participants with more moderate or neutral political views (those who “neither approve nor disapprove” of the Russian leadership): While this concern ranked relatively low for them in the 2021 survey wave compared to other participants, it seemed to gain prominence in this group 3 years after.

Discussion and Conclusions

We opened this article with an excerpt from a 1985 song by British singer Sting, who sought to make an artistic commentary on the Cold War era of nuclear arms races, the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, and the risk of a nuclear war. Sting rerecorded the song one month after Russia invaded its smaller neighbor in 2022, pleading for peace in the bloodiest conflict on the European continent since World War II.¹⁶ With the shadow of nuclear war once again hanging over East–West relations, our aim was to provide new evidence of how the Russian public views the use of nuclear weapons in this dramatically shifting new geopolitical context.

Interpretation of the Results

Our findings indicate that the proportion of Russians who would support nuclear use in a conflict with NATO has remained unchanged after the full-scale invasion. The findings from the 2021 and 2024 studies suggest that about one-third of the Russian general population would support their government’s decision to violate the nonuse norm when such an action yields substantive strategic benefits, and there is even a small hawkish minority that would prefer the nuclear strike over conventional alternatives. However, that also means that there is a two-thirds majority that would oppose the first use of nuclear weapons and would even be willing to accept military defeat instead.

One explanation for this remarkable continuity in support for nuclear use would be simply the entrenchment of public views that are resilient against both elite messaging and the changes in the broader strategic environment. However, our analysis also showed that the Russian public is now relatively less concerned about the immorality of nuclear use and more concerned about NATO’s retaliation in response to Russian nuclear strikes. This evidence suggests a more likely explanation for the null result: that the two countervailing mechanisms discussed in the theory section of this paper––normalization and deterrence––may have balanced each other out post-invasion. In other words, it is plausible that while Russian nuclear signaling did manage to impact the normative underpinnings of the “nuclear taboo” in Russian society, the heightened concern about NATO’s response counteracted the potential increase in public support for nuclear use.

A more sensitive analysis using a six-point ordinal scale then allowed us to detect a small change in public support for the use of nuclear weapons: in terms of the intensity of their feelings, Russians expressed relatively stronger opposition to nuclear use after the invasion. In particular, we saw an increase in the number of those selecting the most extreme disapproval option. Although more research is needed for a more complete understanding of these dynamics, it is plausible that the deterrence logic––where we observed the most significant change in our exploratory analysis of relevant concerns––pushed the individuals toward selecting the more extreme disapproval options.

The exploratory analysis of our participants’ concerns about nuclear use also allows us to reconcile our findings with responses in regular public opinion polls in Russia. For instance, a July 2024 poll has shown that the percentage of Russians who “believe that Russia’s use of nuclear weapons in the current conflict could be justified” increased from 29 percent to 34 percent over the past year (Levada 2024). Putting aside the effect size and statistical error, some may argue that these results indicate increasing support for nuclear use among the Russian public and, therefore, contradict the findings of our study. However, the belief on whether nuclear use could be “justified” is merely one of the several factors underpinning public support for nuclear use––and the aforementioned shift aligns well with our findings that the public concerns about the immorality of nuclear use decreased in Russia. Estimating the extent of public support for nuclear use would necessarily need to take into account other relevant public concerns––for example, the consequentialist concern about retaliation. This is difficult to do by merely looking at responses to vaguely formulated questions in standard public opinion polls, highlighting the added value of survey experiments that provide the respondents with more detailed hypothetical scenarios in which all these considerations would likely play a role at once.

The finding that public support for nuclear use was comparable in NATO and Ukraine scenarios is among the more surprising. In line with our theoretical expectations, the participants were significantly less concerned about retaliation in the Ukraine scenario. However, it is possible that despite this difference, the deterrence mechanism was still effective enough to prevent an increase in public agreement with a nuclear strike.

However, by far, the biggest concern the participants reported with respect to the use of nuclear weapons in both NATO and Ukraine scenarios was civilian casualties resulting from the strike. The catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear use demonstrated in the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been critical for the emergence of the “nuclear taboo” (Tannenwald 2007) and continue to inform contemporary Western NGO campaigns to “ban the bomb” (Borrie 2014). Although our research design did not allow us to establish a causal relationship between the individual-level relevance of this concern and the aversion to nuclear use, both 2021 and 2024 studies provide evidence that this humanitarian issue resonates significantly more strongly among ordinary citizens than rationalist concerns about retaliation, setting a dangerous precedent in world politics, or reputation costs that Russia would suffer as a consequence of nuclear employment.

In our study, we also found partial support for our hypothesis that the public would be more supportive of a demonstrative nuclear explosion over a direct nuclear strike on a military facility. Our results diverge from the 2021 study, which found no difference in the public agreement with respect to these two options. One possible explanation for this divergence is that the possibility of a nuclear demonstration has now been more commonly discussed in Russian public debate (Suslov 2024), possibly leading to increased familiarity with this unprecedented yet still somewhat less escalatory policy option.¹⁷

The last piece of evidence we wish to highlight is the finding about the significant shift in concerns about nuclear use in one specific segment of the Russian population: individuals who neither approve nor disapprove of the Russian leadership. For illustration, these politically moderate or neutral citizens comprised about one-fifth (22.4 percent) of the composition of our sample. Our findings provide grounds for speculation that this segment of Russian society paid relatively little attention to the possibility of nuclear escalation before the invasion, and it was then relatively most impacted by the intense post-invasion domestic and international debates over such worst-case scenarios.

Contribution and Avenues for Future Research

Our findings offer a timely contribution to the current policy debates about the impact of the Kremlin’s nuclear saber-rattling and the threat of a nuclear escalation in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war (see, for example, Adamsky 2023; Lieber and Press 2023; McDermott, Pauly, and Slovic 2023; Gottemoeller 2024; Williams 2024). As consistently argued by experts on Russian politics, there is an important and often overlooked linkage between Putin’s foreign policy and domestic public opinion that needs to be taken into account when one tries to understand the particular policies of contemporary Russian leadership (Efimova and Strebkov 2020). While the Russian decision to violate the long-standing tradition of nuclear nonuse would likely depend on multiple factors and considerations—including pressure from China and India and concerns about Western retaliation—it is conceivable that the persisting public aversion to nuclear use could serve as an important constraint on the Russian government’s temptation to cross the nuclear Rubicon.

After all, some of the recent decisions of the current Russian government in the context of the war in Ukraine show the importance of public opinion for the Kremlin. For example, many experts on Russian politics agreed that while it had been strategically sound for Russia to conduct the partial mobilization in the Spring of 2022, President Putin had postponed the decision, particularly due to the fears of public backlash (Sukhov 2022). Others suggest that as of late 2024, Putin continues to decline requests from the Russian Ministry of Defense to announce a new mobilization wave because of his concerns about negative public response (Stepanenko et al. 2024). Ukrainian President Zelensky also recently expressed his belief that Vladimir Putin would not use a nuclear weapon due to his fear “of losing power and money, and most importantly, losing societal support” (Shkarlat 2024, emphasis added). If Zelensky’s theory is correct, studying the fluctuation in Russian public support for nuclear use in today’s volatile security environment is a worthwhile exercise, with importance that extends beyond mere scholarly curiosity.

From the perspective of Russian domestic politics, our work potentially indicates a gulf between the rhetoric of the Russian elites—including foreign policy experts in Russian think tanks and the guests appearing on Russian TV—and the attitudes of the Russian public. While some of these trends have been identified already in the past (Werning, Rivera, and Zimmerman 2019), researchers should explore in more depth the causes and the consequences of the variation.

The results of our experiment also speak to a major debate about the effectiveness of Western deterrent strategies toward Russia. Some scholars argue that the Western signaling about potential consequences for potential Russian nuclear use has led to tangible results (Arndt, Horovitz, and Onderco 2023). A much bigger chorus of experts doubts the effectiveness of Western deterrence (Stein 2023; Kimmage 2024). Our findings that the concern about NATO’s nuclear and conventional retaliation is significantly more relevant for the Russian public than it was before the 2022 invasion suggest that at least some of the Western strategic messaging is possibly found credible by Russians.

More generally, our study contributes to the literature on the effects of foreign policy shocks on public attitudes (Mueller 1991; Page and Shapiro 1992). A recent study has found that German and Dutch citizens have become more “hawkish” with respect to nuclear deterrence and potential nuclear use shortly after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine (Onderco, Smetana, and Etienne 2023). Yet, we do not see a similar effect in Russia, with public support for nuclear use being, on balance, virtually identical to prewar times. These findings suggest a remarkable continuity of attitudes toward nuclear use in Russian society, with a clear majority displaying attitudes in line with the idea of a strong “atomic aversion” and a persistent minority continuing to approve of the employment of these weapons against Russia’s enemies. The number of those who are particularly “trigger-happy” and support nuclear use when conventional alternatives are available is nevertheless significantly lower, never increasing the 10-percentage-point mark in any of our scenarios.

Finally, we wish to highlight the fact that our study represents one of the rare instances of experimental research on the nonuse of nuclear weapons conducted in Russia. Our findings arguably underscore the continuous validity of the relevance of fielding survey experiments in non-Western––and particularly non-US––settings, which can bring about substantively different findings compared to those in the WEIRD¹⁸ countries (Colgan 2019). Future research should seize on this debate and expand on it, perhaps by studying public attitudes in other relevant non-Western countries, both nuclear and nonnuclear ones.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge funding from Charles University’s PRIMUS program (grant 22/HUM/005, “Experimental Lab for International Security Studies—ELISS”) and the University Center of Excellence (UNCE) program (grant 24/SSH/18, “Peace Research Center Prague II”). Michal Onderco additionally acknowledges the support from the project “Nuclear Politics in Europe,” generously funded by the Stanton Foundation. We would also like to thank Valeriia Gergiieva, Sarah Komasova, and Danila Naumov for their kind help with translating our survey instrument into the Russian language. Finally, we thank the participants of seminars, workshops, and roundtables at Brown University, Harvard University, Boston University, University of Southern Maine, Vienna School of International Studies, and Durham University for their valuable feedback on the findings of our study.

Author Biography

Michal Smetana is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University; Director of the Peace Research Center Prague (PRCP); Head Researcher at the Experimental Lab for International Security Studies (ELISS); and a Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) project MICROCODE. Previously, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). His articles have been published in Security Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Affairs, Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Review, Contemporary Security Policy, Research & Politics, Journal of Experimental Political Sciences, and many other scholarly and policy journals. He is the author of Nuclear Deviance.

Michal Onderco is a Full Professor of International Relations in the Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Research Fellow at the Peace Research Center Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University. His current research concerns domestic sources of foreign and security policy, with a particular focus on nuclear strategy, nonproliferation, and arms control. During the academic year 2018–2019, Professor Onderco was a CISAC Junior Faculty Fellow at Stanford University. Between 2012 and 2013, he was a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. His articles have been published in International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Contemporary Security Policy, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, European Journal of International Security, Foreign Policy Analysis, Washington Quarterly, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and many other scholarly and policy journals. He is the author of Network Nonproliferation.

Footnotes

References