Läckta dokument: Rysk tröskel för kärnvapen lägre än Putin medger offentligt

The Russian Federation is known to possess or have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and chemical weapons. It is one of the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Russia possesses a total of 5,889 nuclear warheads as of 2023, the largest confirmed stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world. Russia's deployed missiles (those actually ready to be launched) number about 1,674, also the largest confirmed strategically deployed arsenal in the world as of 2023. The remaining weapons are either in reserve stockpiles, or have been retired and are slated for dismantling. Russia's predecessor state, the Soviet Union, reached a peak stockpile of about 45,000 nuclear warheads in 1986. The number of weapons Russia may possess is currently controlled by the bilateral New START treaty with the United States. The Soviet Union ratified the Geneva Protocol—prohibiting the use of biological and chemical weapons in interstate conflicts—on April 5, 1928, with reservations that were later dropped on January 18, 2001. Russia is also party to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. The Soviet biological weapons program violated the Biological Weapons Convention and was the world's largest, longest, and most sophisticated program of its kind. At its peak, the program employed up to 65,000 people.Despite being a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, Russia has continued to hold and occasionally use chemical weapons. In 1997, Russia declared an arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons, which it worked in part to decrease. Its stock of weapons was officially declared destroyed in 2017. The poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018 and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in 2020, both carried out by Russia, revealed that the country maintained an illicit chemical weapons program.

Taktiska kärnvapen, (också kallade slagfältskärnvapen eller icke-strategiska kärnvapen), är en typ av kärnvapen som har kortare räckvidd och är mindre kraftfulla än de strategiska kärnvapen som är avsedda att avfyras över stora avstånd (t.ex. från en kontinent till en annan) och utplåna hela städer, regioner eller länder. Istället är de taktiska kärnvapnen tänkta att användas på slagfältet som en integrerad del av den övriga krigföringen. Exempel på insats av taktiska kärnvapen skulle kunna vara angrepp för att utplåna större formationer av pansarfordon eller angrepp mot stora fartyg eller flottformationer. Som vapenbärare av taktiska kärnvapen kan användas raketer, torpeder, minor, artillerigranater eller flygbomber.