Top Russian military officials discussed using nuclear weapon in Ukraine, US report says
- Report says Vladimir Putin did not take part in the discussions, and there was no indication the Russian military had decided to deploy them
- The Russian leader’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Western media is ‘deliberately pumping up the topic’ of the use of nuclear arms
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The White House said it was increasingly concerned over Moscow’s talk of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, after a media report said top Russian military officials had discussed how and when to use such a weapon.
“We have grown increasingly concerned about the potential as these months have gone on,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday.
Kirby did not confirm a New York Times report that said high-level Russian military officials recently discussed when and how they might use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
The report, which cited unnamed US officials, said Russian President Vladimir Putin did not take part in the discussions, and there was no indication that the Russian military had decided to deploy the weapons.
But Kirby said any comments on the use of nuclear weapons by Russia are “deeply concerning”, and said the United States takes them seriously.
He pointed to recent Putin comments talking about nuclear weapons and referencing the bombs US forces dropped on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of World War II.
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“We take note of that,” Kirby said.
“It increasingly is unsettling in terms of the degree to which he feels he has to continue to stretch to prosecute this war,” he said.
At the same time, Kirby reiterated, Washington sees no indications that Russia is making preparations to use nuclear weapons, adding that US intelligence does not necessarily see or know everything.
The United States has been warning Moscow for weeks over public comments from top Russian officials that they could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine in certain cases, particularly if they felt there was a threat to Russian territorial integrity.
The most recent threat came from former Russian president and senior security council official Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s objective to reclaim all its territories occupied by Russia, which include the Donbas region and Crimea, would be a “threat to the existence of our state”.
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That, Medvedev said, would be “a direct reason” to invoke nuclear deterrence.
However, early Wednesday Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Western media was “deliberately pumping up the topic of the use of nuclear weapons”.
Moscow does “not have the slightest intention to take part in this,” he said, calling the Times report “very irresponsible”.
Moscow also frequently accuses Kyiv of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, and alleged at the start of the war that the Western Nato alliance planned to use Ukraine as a bridgehead to threaten Russia – allegations denied by Ukraine and Nato.
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In September, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said that the United States has warned Russia at “very high levels” of “catastrophic consequences” for using nuclear arms.
Russia’s nuclear doctrine states only the president can make the decision to use nuclear weapons.
Russia has the world’s largest arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons – which could be used to destroy a small amount of heavy weaponry on the battlefield or kill tens of thousands of people in a city.
Unlike intercontinental ballistic missiles, the process of using a tactical nuke takes more time and additional steps, as the weapons must be retrieved from storage and shipped to the front lines.
Since they’ve spent a long time in storage, the reliability of the nuclear weapons could be spotty and would need testing to determine how suitable they are to be launched.
Additional reporting by Reuters and Business Insider
