War between Ukraine and Russia More than a month and a half after Vladimir Putin made such threats at the start of the war, Ukrainians and Americans reassured this Friday that they would not “take lightly” or “underpower” “tactical” nuclear strikes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned this Friday of the danger that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, cornered by his military setbacks in Ukraine, could resort to a tactical nuclear weapon. And to affirm that “the whole world” must be “concerned.”
The head of the American foreign intelligence service, William Burns, already estimated on Thursday that the threat of the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons or “low power” by President Putin should not be “taken lightly” and that he would “sink into despair”. the failure of his army.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy clarified to CNN that these concerns relate to “nuclear weapons” or “chemical weapons”. “They can do it”, “Human lives are worth nothing to them,” he pounded in this interview, which will be broadcast in full on Sunday, but from which the American broadcaster has published an excerpt. The Ukrainian President started: “Let’s not worry, let’s be prepared.” Understand “the whole world”.
The threat is all the more palpable the day after the sinking of the Russian cruiser Moskva, which would have been sunk by two Ukrainian missiles, a senior Pentagon official said on Friday, stressing that it was “a major blow” to Russia. “We are fully aware that we will not be forgiven for attacking Moscow,” Natalia Goumenyuk, spokeswoman for the military command of Ukraine’s southern region, said during a briefing on Friday.
The concern also reflects the fact that shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin spoke of putting its nuclear forces on alert. “We haven’t really seen any concrete signs like operations or military action that could increase our concerns,” the CIA chief nuanced on Thursday.
Russia has many tactical nuclear weapons that are less powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, according to its “escalate-deescalate” doctrine, which would consist of using a low-powered nuclear weapon first to regain advantage in the event of a conventional conflict in the West . Use of a tactical nuclear weapon against a conventional army of an unarmed state [de l’arme nucléaire] would go completely beyond the scope of official Russian disarmament and non-proliferation policies,” a French source told Liberation in late February, which then claimed “it’s not going to happen.”