Russia will change its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons in response to what it sees as Western escalation in the war in Ukraine, state media quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying.
The existing nuclear doctrine, established by a decree of President Vladimir Putin in 2020, says that Russia can use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the survival of the state.
Some hawks among Russian military analysts have called on Putin to lower the threshold for nuclear use in order to “sober” Russia’s enemies in the West.
Putin said in June that the nuclear doctrine is a “living instrument” that can change depending on world events. Ryabkov’s comments on Sunday were the clearest statement yet that changes will indeed come.
“The work is at an advanced stage and there is a clear intention to make corrections,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying by state news agency TASS.
He said the decision was “related to the course of escalation by our Western adversaries” regarding the conflict in Ukraine.
Moscow accuses the West of using Ukraine as a proxy to wage war against it, with the aim of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia and breaking it up.
The United States (U.S.) and its allies deny this, saying they are helping Ukraine fend off a colonial-style war of aggression by Russia.
Putin said on the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that anyone who tried to prevent or threaten it would suffer “consequences you have never faced in your history”.
Since then, he has issued a series of further statements that the West considers a nuclear threat and announced the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
That hasn’t stopped the U.S. and its allies from ramping up military aid to Ukraine in ways unimaginable when the war began, including the delivery of tanks, long-range missiles and F-16 fighter jets.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the operation was a mockery of Putin’s “red lines”. It also lobbies hard to allow the U.S. to use advanced Western weapons to attack targets deep inside Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Sunday that the West was “going too far” and that Russia would do anything to protect its interests.
Ryabkov did not say when the updated nuclear doctrine would be finished.
“The time to complete this work is quite a difficult question, given that we are talking about the most important aspects of ensuring our national security,” he said.
Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other country. Putin said in March that Moscow was ready for a possible nuclear war “from a military-technical point of view.”
He said, however, that he saw no rush to nuclear conflict and that Russia had never faced the need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Klix.ba writes.
