I remember fondly the time when we didn’t have credible everyday talk about nuclear strikes clogging the relentless news cycle.
A simpler time, when talk of nuclear confrontation seemed a long-lost relic from the faraway cold war years.
All that is gone, and every single day, it seems, we have to carefully study statements by power players rushing the Armageddon clock to the midnight strike.
Today (7), once again Russian President Vladimir Putin delved into the theme, saying that there is no need to use nuclear weapons to deliver victory for Moscow in Ukraine.
This was hailed in the MSM as ‘the strongest signal yet from the Kremlin chief that there will not be a nuclear strike’.
Reuters reported:
“Putin, whose forces have been making advances in eastern Ukraine in recent months, said he did not see the conditions for the use of such weapons and requested that people stop discussing the nuclear topic.”
Watch: “Russia will only consider the use of nuclear weapons in exceptional cases, which have not yet occurred.”
“Russia will only consider the use of nuclear weapons in exceptional cases, which have not yet occurred,” Putin clarified. pic.twitter.com/aRzvirWx2v
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) June 7, 2024
But the leader of the world’s biggest nuclear power did not rule out changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine.
Russia could also test nuclear weapons, although he saw no need to do so right now.
“Putin’s response came to a question from Sergei Karaganov, an influential Russian analyst, who asked if Putin should hold a ‘nuclear pistol to the temple’ of the West over Ukraine.
‘The use is possible in an exceptional case – in the event of a threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. I don’t think that such a case has come. There is no such need’, Putin said at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
‘But this doctrine is a living tool and we are carefully watching what is happening in the world around us and do not exclude making some changes to this doctrine. This is also related to the testing of nuclear weapons’.”
Watch: ‘We see what the Russian character is, and we rely on it, and we don’t need any nuclear weapons’.
We see what the Russian character is, and we rely on it, and we don’t need any nuclear weapons — Putin pic.twitter.com/Z9wD5jd1t3
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) June 7, 2024
Russia’s published 2020 nuclear doctrine considers using a nuclear weapon as a response to an attack using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.
Another option is when a conventional weapons attack against Russia puts ‘the very existence of the state under threat’.
“If necessary, we will conduct tests. So far, there is no need for this either, since our information and computer capabilities allow us to produce everything in its current form.”
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