Deputy Foreign Minister: Russia to Alter Nuclear Doctrine in Response to West’s Involvement in Ukraine
‘As we have repeatedly said before, the work is in the advanced stage,’ Russia’s deputy foreign minister said.
A top Russian official said the Kremlin will change its nuclear weapons doctrine in response to the war in Ukraine and what Moscow describes as an escalation in the conflict.
Russia’s current nuclear doctrine, issued by President Vladimir Putin in 2020, states that Moscow may use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or in response to a conventional attack that poses an existential threat to the Russian state.
In recent years, some Russian officials have publicly suggested that Putin should revise the doctrine in response to the war in Ukraine and what they describe as ongoing Western and NATO involvement in the conflict.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkovtold told state-run media on Sunday that the Kremlin has a “clear intent” to change its doctrine on when nuclear weapons should be used.
according to the state-run Tass news agency.
Putin said in June that the country’s nuclear doctrine was a “living instrument” that could change depending on world events. Based on Ryabkov’s comments, it’s not clear when the doctrine would be changed.
“The timeframe for its completion is a rather complicated issue, considering that we are talking about the most important aspect of our national security,” Ryabkov said.
Longtime Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Sunday that the United States and its allies are “going too far” and that Russia would do everything to protect its interests.
On the first day of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin said that any forces that attempted to block Moscow would suffer “consequences” that they ”have never faced” in their history. Since then, he has also made public statements about Russia’s nuclear arsenal and deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which shares a long border with Ukraine as well as Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, three NATO member states.
Moscow has accused the West and NATO of using Ukraine to wage a proxy war against Russia with the intent of breaking it apart. The United States and its allies have denied such claims, saying they are helping Ukraine defend itself against a war of aggression, while some top officials have signaled Kyiv could eventually join NATO.
Reuters contributed to this report.
