Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday issued nuclear warnings to the West over conventional strikes on its territory from Ukraine. He tabled an updated version of the nuclear doctrine which specifies that any attack on Russia by a non-nuclear power, if supported or backed by a nuclear power, will be regarded as a “joint attack on the Russian Federation.”
Responding to the threat, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said, “Russia no longer has any instruments to intimidate the world apart from nuclear blackmail,” adding that these tactics wouldn’t work.
“It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
“The conditions for Russia’s transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly fixed,” he added.
“We will consider such a possibility when we receive reliable information about a massive launch of air and space attack assets and them crossing our state border,” Putin said, citing “strategic and tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic and other flying vehicles.”
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy has said that he would ask his allies in the US and Europe for approval to use longer-range weapons to target deep within Russian territory, which raises concerns for some of Ukraine’s supporters. The Biden administration has indicated that it has not authorized Kyiv to conduct strikes with US weapons inside Russia.
Russia’s nuclear doctrine, outlined in a 2020 decree by Putin, says that the country may resort to nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack from an adversary or a conventional attack that poses a threat to its existence.
In 2022, the United States expressed significant concern regarding the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia, with CIA director Bill Burns saying that the US warned Putin about the repercussions of such actions. Russia and the US together control 88% of the world’s nuclear weapons, Reuters reported.