Putin Issues Nuclear Warning to West
Over Long-range Strikes from Ukraine
Reuters & The Print
MOSCOW (September 25, 2024) — President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Wednesday that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles, and that Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.
His decision to change Russia’s official nuclear doctrine is the Kremlin’s answer to deliberations in the United States and Britain about whether or not to give Ukraine permission to fire conventional Western missiles into Russia.
Putin, opening a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, said that the changes were in response to a swiftly changing global landscape, which had thrown up new threats and risks for Russia.
The 71-year-old Kremlin chief, the primary decision-maker on Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal, said he wanted to underscore one key change in particular.
“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.
Breaking: Putin’s New Nuclear Threshold
The conditions for Russia’s transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly fixed,” Putin said, adding that Moscow would consider such a move if it detected the start of a massive launch of missiles, aircraft or drones against it.
Russia reserved the right to also use nuclear weapons if it or ally Belarus were the subject of aggression, including by conventional weapons, Putin said.
Putin said the clarifications were carefully calibrated and commensurate with the modern military threats facing Russia — confirmation that the nuclear doctrine was changing.
Confrontation
The 2-1/2-year-old Ukraine war has triggered the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — which is considered to be the time when the two Cold War superpowers came closest to intentional nuclear war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been urging Kyiv’s allies for months to let Ukraine fire Western missiles including long-range US ATACMS and British Storm Shadows deep into Russia to limit Moscow’s ability to launch attacks.
With Ukraine losing key towns to gradually advancing Russian forces in the country’s east, the war is entering what Russian officials say is the most dangerous phase to date. Russia controls just under one-fifth of Ukrainian territory and has warned the West of the risks of a global war.
Putin, who casts the West as a decadent aggressor, and US President Joe Biden, who casts Russia as a corrupt autocracy and Putin as a killer, have both warned that a direct Russia-NATO confrontation could escalate into World War Three.
Russia is the world’s largest nuclear power. Together, Russia and the US control 88% of the world’s nuclear warheads.
In his remarks to Russia’s Security Council, a type of modern-day politburo of Putin’s most powerful officials including influential hawks, Putin said that work on amendments on changing the doctrine had been going on for the past year.
“The list of military threats has been supplemented,” said Putin.
Russia, he said, would consider using nuclear weapons “upon receiving reliable information about the massive launch of aerospace attack vehicles and their crossing of our state border, meaning strategic or tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic and other aircraft.”
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Dmitry Antonov and Maxim Rodionov; writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Andrew Osborn and Mark Heinrich)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibilty for its content.
(Note: Both Reuters and MSN posted this alarming article hours ago and both links opened on vacant pages from which the text appeared to have been removed — EAW, Sept. 25, 5PM PST)
Putin Ally Warns West of Nuclear War over Ukraine
Reuters
MOSCOW (September 19, 2024) — A close ally of President Vladimir Putin warned Western governments on Thursday that a nuclear war would ensue if they gave the green light for Ukraine to use long-range Western weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of parliament and a member of Putin’s Security Council, was responding to a vote in the European Parliament urging EU countries to give such approval to Kyiv.
“What the European Parliament is calling for leads to a world war using nuclear weapons,” Volodin wrote on Telegram.
His message was entitled “For those who didn’t get it the first time” – an apparent reference to a warning by Putin last week that the West would be directly fighting Russia if it let Ukraine fire the long-range missiles onto Russian territory.
The Ukraine war has triggered the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which is considered to be the time when the two Cold War superpowers came closest to intentional nuclear war.
The outgoing head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, told The Times this week that the Kremlin leader had declared “many red lines” before but not escalated conflict with the West when they were crossed. Putin’s spokesman said his comment was dangerous and provocative.
In a non-binding resolution adopted on Thursday, the European Parliament asked EU countries to “immediately lift restrictions on the use of Western weapons systems delivered to Ukraine against legitimate military targets on Russian territory.”
Volodin wrote: “If something like this happens, Russia will give a tough response using more powerful weapons. No one should have any illusions about this.” He said it appeared to Moscow that the West had forgotten the vast sacrifices made by the Soviet Union in World War Two.
He said Europeans should understand that it would take Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, known in the West as Satan II, just 3 minutes and 20 seconds to strike Strasbourg, where the European Parliament meets.
