LONDON, May 10 (Reuters) – Asked whether Russia would rule out a pre-emptive tactical nuclear strike on Ukraine, Russia’s deputy foreign minister said on Tuesday that a decision on the possible use of nuclear weapons was clearly enshrined in Russia’s military doctrine. .
“We have a military doctrine – everything is written there,” Alexander Grushko was quoted as saying by the state news agency RIA.
Russia’s official principles of military deployment allow the use of nuclear weapons if they – or other types of weapons of mass destruction – are used against it, or if the Russian state faces an existential threat from conventional weapons.
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The decision to use Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal, the world’s largest, is up to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia’s invasion has killed thousands, displaced nearly 10 million and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States, the world’s largest nuclear power.
The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, said on Saturday that Putin believed he could not afford to lose in Ukraine and warned that the West could not ignore the risk of using tactical nuclear weapons from Moscow. Read more
“We do not see, as an intelligence community, practical evidence at this stage of Russia’s planning to deploy or even use tactical nuclear weapons,” Burns said.
However, he warned that “the stakes are very high for Putin’s Russia”.
NUCLEAR STRIKE?
A decree signed by Putin on June 2, 2020, says Russia views its nuclear weapons as an “exclusive deterrent.”
He echoes the phraseology of military doctrine, but adds details of four circumstances in which a nuclear strike will be ordered. These include reliable information about a ballistic missile attack on Russia and an enemy attack “on critical state or military facilities of the Russian Federation, the decommissioning of which would disrupt the response of nuclear forces.”
Putin, who has repeatedly expressed resentment at the West’s treatment of Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, says Ukraine has been used by the United States to threaten Russia.
He justified his February 24 order for a special military operation by saying that Ukraine had persecuted Russian-speakers and that the United States wanted to expand NATO’s military alliance in a way that would threaten Russia.
US President Joe Biden describes Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a battle in a much broader global battle between democracy and autocracy. He also called Putin a war criminal and said the former KGB spy could not stay in power.
Ukraine has denied Russian allegations that it has persecuted Russian-speakers and says it is fighting for its survival. Russia denies accusations by Ukraine and the West that its forces have committed war crimes.
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Report by Guy Falkonbridge; Edited by Raisa Kasolowski
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