What is the difference between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons? And which one might Russia use first?

Russian President Vladimir Putin brandished the use of nuclear weapons, which highlighted the Russian nuclear arsenal and its destructive capabilities that terrify the world.

Attention has focused on tactical nuclear weapons, which experts believe that Moscow may use in the first stage if it carries out its threats.

What are those weapons?

And what is distinguished from strategic weapons?

According to Western reports, Russia possesses 5,977 nuclear weapons, some tactical and some strategic, and among them - according to US intelligence - about two thousand tactical nuclear weapons.

A tactical nuclear warhead has an explosive payload of between 10 and 100 kilotons, and each kiloton is equal to 1,000 tons of TNT.

As for the strategic nuclear warhead, it has an explosive payload ranging from 500 to 800 kilotons, and its range is longer than the tactical one.

Russia has two missile systems that can carry tactical nuclear warheads, and it is the Kalibr missile, which is launched from submarines and warships and hits targets on land and sea, and has a range of between 1500 and 2500 km.

The second is the "Iskander" missile launch system, which is launched from the ground, and its targets are also ground, and its range ranges between 400 and 500 km.

Tactical nuclear weapons are used to strike a target in a specific area, while seeking to avoid the spread of nuclear radiation on a large scale.

But experts say that there is no difference between the tactical and the strategic, as these weapons are all lethal and the aim of their use is to bring about a strategic change in the battle, as happened before in America’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945 with two bombs: the first has an explosive power of about 15 kilotons, and the second is 21 kilotons .

Although this is included in the payload of what are now called tactical weapons, the two bombs killed more than 100,000 people instantly, and tens of thousands later died from radiation.

A simulation by Princeton University of an American-Russian conflict showed that a conflict that begins with the use of a tactical nuclear weapon may witness a rapid escalation that could leave more than 90 million dead and wounded.