On Wednesday, Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Julian Barnes of the New York Times reported that the Biden administration has changed course and is now willing to send the equipment necessary to help Ukraine reclaim the Crimean peninsula as its own. The pivot comes as “fears that the Kremlin would retaliate using a tactical nuclear weapon have dimmed” and the strategic value of expanding the battlefield has come into clearer view.

Naturally, the Russians had an immediate response, as Reuters reporters Guy Faulconbridge and Felix Light describe:

[Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev], [a]n ally of President Vladimir Putin warned NATO on Thursday that a defeat of Russia in Ukraine could trigger a nuclear war, while the head of the Russian Orthodox Church [Patriarch Kirill] said the world would end if the West tried to destroy Russia.

Such apocalyptic rhetoric is intended to deter the U.S.-led NATO military alliance from getting even more involved in the war, on the eve of a meeting of Ukraine’s allies to discuss sending Kyiv more weapons.

Any conflict between Russia and NATO powers has the potential to produce nuclear armageddon. Additionally, no one sane wants to see tactical nuclear weapons used on any battlefield anywhere on Earth. These risks naturally demand caution on all sides of the Ukraine war.

For the West, a key question revolves around understanding Russia’s true position on its own borders. Their nuclear doctrine authorizes the use of nuclear weapons (of all types) even in a conventional war if “the very existence of the state is threatened.”

Russia has claimed  Crimea as their own since it annexed it in 2014. In September 2022,  they additionally claimed the Ukrainian oblasts – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and parts of Mykolaiv. At the time, they did not have full control of any of these latter territories, and they hold even less of them now.

It’s doubtful that fully losing control of the areas Russia captured since their 2022 invasion would be perceived by the Kremlin as “a threat to the very existence of the state,” but the loss of Crimea might actually cross that threshold. This is partly for cultural and psychological reasons, and partly for purely military reasons. Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is located on the peninsula and they have air bases there, too, all of which can be seen as critical to the country’s national defense.

Either way, Crimea is part of Ukraine and Ukraine has the right to reclaim it. Russia’s bellicose statements are intended to make the Biden administration and other NATO leaders think twice about sending the equipment Ukraine will need to accomplish that task, but that doesn’t mean it’s an entirely empty threat.

The recapture of Crimea could very well be reminiscent of the Cuban Missile Crisis which was resolved by the deft backchannel negotiation between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who both had to work around hawkish military officers whose demands could lead to armageddon.

It’s a tricky business. For example, it’d be nice to see some sane Russian officers band together and frog-march Vladimir Putin out of the Kremlin, but there’s a point of military loss that no Russian officer would willingly take on their own responsibility. How does Russia lose gracefully without feeling the requirements of the nuclear doctrine have been met?

It’s the key question the West must understand and navigate.