Russia will resort to using thenuclear weapon only in the event of an existential threat. Dimitri PeskovKremlin spokesman, without providing any further information, has drawn a red line that the western bloc must not cross.
The Moscow Red Line
During a lengthy interview with CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour, Peskov spoke about national security and what this concept means for the Russian government. “We have a very clear concept National security“which provides for the use of nuclear weapons” only with threat to its mere existence”. The spokesman has been pressed on this issue several times. This is his response: “Putin wants the world to understand our concerns. We’ve been trying to explain them for two decades, but no one has listened to us”.
Amanpour then reminded him that after speaking to Putin, the Finnish president said the Russian president had told him “very bad things” were going to happen. “Do you want to rule them out?” she insisted. And at this point Peskov, who had previously freaked out, specifically said before insisting that Russia would only use nuclear weapons if its existence was threatened.
“There are no other reasons” that could push Russia to use nuclear weapons, Dmitry Peskov reiterated after allegations Volodymir Zelenskyy that at this year’s Munich Security Conference he began to speak about the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons on the territory of Ukraine. “Before it was too late, we decided to launch a special military operation to counter the antiRussian forces that have emerged near our borders,” he said.
The status of the mission in Ukraine
Peskov then spoke of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. A mission that, according to the Kremlin spokesman, is going according to plan. The same spokesman specified that from the beginning no one thought that the operation would take a long time a couple of days. The main objective of the armed forces deployed in Mariupol is to expel nationalist units from the city, he addedultimate goal of Moscow does not coincide with the occupation of Ukraine.
In detail, Russia “has not yet achieved its goals” in Ukraine, but everything “is progressing strictly according to the established plans and tasks”. Speaking of goals: Moscow is demanding the demilitarization of Kiev, neutrality, the elimination of “nationalist battalions” and the recognition of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.
On the question of time, Peskov said that from the beginning no one in Moscow thought that a special military operation in Ukraine would last a few days. He added that the main goal of the Russian army’s special operation in Mariupol is to clean up the city nationalist unity “who use civilians as human shields and kill those who try to leave the city”.
He also assured that there are Ukrainians who “work with the Russian army and don’t want people to die”. Peskov therefore branded as fake news the message from civilians deported to Russia and forced into concentration camps: “This is not true, these are untruths, this is a propaganda war.