Risk of nuclear escalation has hung over since Russia sent troops into its neighbour in Feb 2022
\nMOSCOW
\nA senior ally of President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the United States and its allies would risk a nuclear response from Moscow.
\nFormer Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia\u2019s Security Council, said that some Ukrainian military commanders were considering hitting missile launch sites inside Russia with Western-supplied long-range missiles.
\nHe did not name the commanders or disclose more details of the alleged plan and there was no immediate reaction from Ukraine to his threat. \u201cWhat does this mean? It means only one thing \u2013 they risk running into the action of paragraph 19 of the fundamentals of Russia\u2019s state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence,\u201d Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app.\u201cThis should be remembered,\u201d Medvedev said.
\nParagraph nineteen of Russia\u2019s 2020 nuclear doctrine sets out the conditions under which a Russian president would consider using a nuclear weapon: broadly as a response to an attack using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, or to the use of conventional weapons against Russia \u201cwhen the very existence of the state is put under threat.\u201d
\nMedvedev made specific mention of point \u201cg\u201d of paragraph nineteen which deals with the nuclear response to a conventional weapons attack.
\nPutin is the decision-maker when it comes to Russia\u2019s vast nuclear arsenal, but diplomats say Medvedev\u2019s views give an indication of hawkish thinking at the top of the Kremlin which has cast the war as an existential struggle with the West.
\nKremlin critics have dismissed some of Medvedev\u2019s nuclear threats in the past as attempts to grab attention or to dissuade the West from supplying Ukraine with more weapons. The United States and its allies have pledged nearly $250 billion in military and other support to Kyiv.
\nThe risk of nuclear escalation has hung over the Ukraine war since Russia sent thousands of troops into its neighbour in February 2022.
\nWashington feared a Russian nuclear escalation in late 2022 and Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, that year communicated concerns to Moscow about any steps towards the use of a nuclear device.
\nRussia and the United States are by far the world\u2019s biggest nuclear powers: Putin controls 5,889 nuclear warheads while U.S. President Joe Biden controls about 5,244 nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
\nMedvedev cast himself as a liberal moderniser when he was president from 2008-2012, but now presents himself as one of the fiercest anti-Western Kremlin hawks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Risk of nuclear escalation has hung over since Russia sent troops into its neighbour in Feb 2022 MOSCOW A senior ally of President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the United States and its allies would risk a nuclear response from Moscow. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-380467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n