Vladimir Putin Approves Broader Use Of Nuclear Weapons
Moscow, Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin formally approved the new nuclear weapons doctrine. The new doctrine, which Putin had outlined in September, significantly lowers the threshold for nuclear attacks. It allows for the usage of nuclear weapons even in response to a conventional attack on Russia.
The formalisation of the new doctrine comes just two days after US President Joe Biden reportedly authorised Ukraine to use long-range US weapons for attacks inside Russia. Under the new nuclear policy, such an attack would prompt Moscow to use nukes.
In September, Putin has warned the West that Moscow would respond with nuclear weapons. Putin said Russia would attack if it were attacked with conventional arms in the latest changes to the country’s nuclear doctrine. He said Russia would consider a conventional attack aided by a nuclear-armed state as a joint attack, which would make such an act eligible for retaliation by nuclear weapons. The President called such attack, “critical threat to our sovereignty”.
Putin and his senior officials have frequently issued threats involving nuclear weapons to not just Ukraine but to its partners as well, such as the United Kingdom, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The new announcement came as the war reached 1000the day.
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“It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any nonnuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation…The conditions for Russia’s transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly fixed,” said Putin, as per Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Putin, as the President, is the primary decision-maker on Russia’s nuclear arsenal and needs to give his final approval to the text. The previous Russian nuclear weapons doctrine allowed the usage of nuclear weapons only in case of a nuclear attack.
Putin issued the warning in September, a month after Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, and as Kyiv’s Western allies whether to allow Kyiv to use longer-range weapons to strike military targets deep inside Russia.
Though the Russian President did not refer to Ukraine directly, he said the revisions to the doctrine were necessary in view of a swiftly changing global landscape that had created new threats and risks for Russia.
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Outlining the new doctrine further, Putin said that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons if it were convinced that a mass cross-border attack by air from strategic and tactical aviation, cruise missiles, drones, and hypersonic weapons is being launched at Russia.
Under the new doctrine, Ukraine’s attacks inside Russian from US, British, or French weapons would allow Russia to use nuclear weapons.
After Biden’s authorisation to Ukraine to use US weapons for strikes inside Russia, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron are expected to issue similar approvals for UK-French long-range weapons, said media report.
(With inputs from agencies)
