After ordering the alerting of Russia’s nuclear deterrent system on February 27, three days into the conflict, Vladimir Putin issued another troubling warning to Westerners. “In Russia we have a concept of internal security and it is public. You can read all the reasons why nuclear weapons are used explained Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in an interview with CNN . If there is an existential threat to our country, nuclear weapons can be used according to our concept”.
The expert: “The probability of using nuclear warheads has increased” Words came after journalist Christiane Amanpour asked him if the Russian president ruled out the use of nuclear weapons in connection with the Ukraine conflict. Among other things, Ulrich Kühn, a nuclear weapons expert from the University of Hamburg and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was quoted by the New York Times as saying that the probability that Moscow would decide to use nuclear weapons was “low but “increasing. “lesser” or tactics, that is, of lesser power than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Primarily, according to his analysis, by throwing them at uninhabited areas, not Ukrainian troops, for demonstration purposes. “It’s terrible to talk about these things commented Kühn but we have to keep in mind that this is becoming possible”.
Pentagon spokesman: Peskov words too nuclear dangerous Pentagon spokesman John Kirby called Moscow’s comments on nuclear power “dangerous”. “A responsible nuclear power should not act like this,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. At the same time, Kirby said the Pentagon sees no evidence of a need to “change the deterrent stance.”
At NATO we discuss chemical and nuclear weapons One of the topics at the NATO summit scheduled for Thursday in Brussels will also be defining a common response should Putin switch to chemical and biological (or worse, nuclear) weapons. It should be a “red line” for some European leaders, but the US President remains cautious, preferring to speak of “severe consequences”. Across the Atlantic, Moscow also denied the allegations, calling them “malicious innuendos.” “We don’t have such weapons,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov replied.