Episode Notes:

Ankit sits down with Andrey Baklitskiy, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva. The two discuss an unusual announcement out of Russia at the start of May 2024 concerning a non-strategic nuclear weapons exercise involving the country’s southern military district. They discuss the exercise and what it could mean, the political implications, whether Russia is evolving its approach to nuclear deterrence through signaling, and the risk of nuclear use in the Russo-Ukrainian war.