Putin warns West over nuclear powers supporting strikes

26/9/2024 6:13

        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.
        
        The 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.
        
        "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.
        
        Russia's current published nuclear doctrine, set out in a
        2020 decree by Putin, says Russia may use nuclear weapons in
        case of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack
        that threatens the existence of the state.
        
        The innovations outlined by Putin include a widening of the
        threats under which Russia would consider a nuclear strike, the
        inclusion of ally Belarus under the nuclear umbrella and the
        idea that a rival nuclear power supporting a conventional strike
        on Russia would also be considered to be attacking it.
        
        The United States in 2022 was so concerned about the
        possible use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia that it
        warned Putin over the consequences of using such weapons,
        according to Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns.
        
        
        
        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 - considered to be the closest the two Cold War
        superpowers came 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 U.S. 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.
        
        Zelenskiy has urged the West to cross and disregard Russia's
        so-called "red lines", and some Western allies have urged the
        United States to do just that, though Putin's Russia, which
        controls just under one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, has warned
        that the West and Ukraine are risking a global war.
        
        "Russia no longer has any instruments to intimidate the
        world apart from nuclear blackmail," Andriy Yermak, Zelenskiy's
        chief of staff, said in response to Putin's remarks. "These
        instruments will not work."
        
        Putin, who casts the West as a decadent aggressor, and U.S.
        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. Republican
        presidential candidate Donald Trump has also warned of the risk
        of nuclear war.
        
        Russia is the world's largest nuclear power. Together,
        Russia and the U.S. 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 nuclear triad remains the most important guarantee of
        ensuring the security of our state and citizens, an instrument
        for maintaining strategic parity and balance of power in the
        world," Putin said.
        
        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."