Putin Has Issued Many Warnings to the West. Is This One Different?

Russia’s announcement on Friday that it had expelled six British diplomats was a familiar chess move in the diplomatic gamesmanship between rivals. What stood out as more ominous was President Vladimir V. Putin’s warning the night before: that a decision to let Ukraine use Western weapons to fire deeper into Russia meant that NATO was “at war” with Russia.

Mr. Putin has made other bellicose threats in response to the West’s stepping up military aid to Ukraine. He has never, though, followed through with any kind of conventional military attack against NATO. It is hard to know whether this time will be different.

Still, Thursday’s warning was one of his most direct statements yet about the prospect of war between NATO and Russia. And he went out of his way to make it, taking the time to record a statement to a state television reporter while at an event St. Petersburg.

If the decision is made to allow Ukraine to fire Western weapons deeper into Russia, Mr. Putin said, “it will mean nothing short of direct involvement — it will mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries are parties to the war in Ukraine.”

“This will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia,” he said, “And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

On Friday, Mr. Putin’s spokesman followed up to emphasize the Russian leader’s words were “very important” and “extremely clear.” And Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, doubled down on Mr. Putin’s rhetoric.

He said that if the West lifted restrictions on the use of weapons deeper into Russia, “that would mean that from that moment NATO countries begin a direct war with Russia.”

“NATO would become a direct party in a war against a nuclear power,” he added. “I think there is no need to explain what kind of consequences that could lead up to.”

Asked on Friday about Russia’s threats, John Kirby, the White House spokesman, said that Mr. Putin “has obviously proven capable of escalation over the last now going on three years. So yeah, we take, we take these comments seriously.”

“But,” he added, “it is not something that we haven’t heard before.”

Mr. Putin’s warning came as Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain traveled to Washington on Friday to meet with President Biden, where the subject of Ukraine’s use of long-range Western weapons was on the agenda. While traveling to Washington, Mr. Starmer said to reporters: “Russia started this conflict. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine. Russia can end this conflict straight away. Ukraine has the right to self-defense.”

While the British diplomats were expelled last month, the fact that the Kremlin announced the expulsion on Friday highlighted the deepening tensions between Moscow and London.

When Mr. Putin announced his decision to invade Ukraine, in an early morning speech on Feb. 24, 2022, he warned that any country that tried to interfere with Russia’s actions would face “consequences such as you have never seen in your entire history.”

The threat was widely seen as a reference to Russia’s enormous arsenal of nuclear weapons — the world’s largest — and a signal that Mr. Putin was prepared to take his fight directly to the NATO alliance.

All along, Mr. Putin has sought to remind the world of the destructive potential of his nuclear arsenal, including holding new types of nuclear-weapons drills and making veiled references to his willingness to use those weapons.

But, as ominous as a war with Russia would be for NATO, it would present big challenges for Mr. Putin as well. He is already relying on Iran and North Korea for weaponry and, reluctant to order another mobilization because of domestic concerns, has used convicts to fill out his army’s ranks. Triggering the mutual defense article in NATO would also pit him against the most powerful militaries in the West.

Perhaps with that in mind, Mr. Putin has also suggested other ways he might strike back at the West for aiding Ukraine, including by supplying weapons to America’s adversaries so that “they will target sensitive facilities of the countries that are doing this to Russia.” And he has raised the possibility that small countries could be at risk, a threatening flexing of Russia’s muscles to its less powerful neighbors.

With those threats in mind, the West has taken a gradual approach to ratcheting up the military capabilities it was providing to Kyiv.

American officials have referred to this strategy as “boiling the frog.” By taking a slower approach — including the separate decisions to send HIMARS rockets, tanks, long-range missiles and F-16 fighter jets — each successive move appears to have proved too minor to trigger a sharp response from Moscow.

Instead, Mr. Putin’s long-running message has been: We will outlast you. He appears convinced, analysts and former Russian officials who know him say, that he will eventually prevail because Russia has the demographic and economic resources to fight a long war, while Ukraine will eventually run out of men and its Western backers will eventually lose their will.

Britain’s eagerness to provide Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine — with the assent of the United States — for use deep into Russia appears to have struck a more sensitive chord, though. The Russian leader called it “a completely different story.”

Ilya Grashchenkov, an analyst of Russian politics based in Moscow, said that with his statement, Mr. Putin was engaging in another act of bargaining with Washington.

“The stakes are getting higher,” Mr. Grashchenkov said in a response to written questions. He added that the sides need to reach some kind of parity before engaging in meaningful negotiations. “Theoretically, at one point such sharp escalation should lead to de-escalation.”

While Moscow and London have shared hostility toward each other for years, the relationship has worsened since the invasion. Britain is habitually portrayed by Russian state television as among the most aggressive and “Russophobic” states in the West.

In May, Britain said that it was expelling a Russian defense attaché as an undeclared military intelligence officer and that it was imposing other restrictions on the Russian Embassy in London.

At the time, Moscow responded by ordering the British defense attaché to leave Russia. The tit-for-tat exchanges have come periodically against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

The six British diplomats most recently expelled were accused of engaging in espionage and sabotage activities. The British Foreign Office said that the accusations of spying by the diplomats were baseless and that the six had left Russia last month.

On Friday, the Russian Federal Security Service, or F.SB., the main successor to the Soviet K.G.B., cited “numerous unfriendly steps taken by London,” a possible reference to signals from Britain that it wanted to allow Ukraine to use its “Storm Shadow” long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia. The F.S.B. also said the British directorate had turned into “a special service, whose main task is to inflict strategic defeat” on Russia.

Maria V. Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in a statement that the six British diplomats had been engaged in “subversive work aimed at harming” Russian people. In a separate statement, the ministry promised to expel more British diplomats should they engage in similar activities.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said on Friday that there was “no talk” about a complete closure of the British Embassy in the Russian capital.

Stephen Castle contributed reporting from London.

Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Ivan Nechepurenko covers Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the countries of the Caucasus, and Central Asia. He is based in Moscow.