WASHINGTON/MOSCOW: High-position Russian military leaders lately bandied when and how they might use politic nuclear munitions on the battleground in Ukraine, the New York Times reported on Wednesday citing unnamed US officers.
But White House spokesperson John Kirby played down the development, saying that Washington didn’t see any signs that Russia was making medications to use nuclear munitions.
Moscow, meanwhile, stressed that the world’s “top precedence” should be to avoid a clash of nuclear powers that it stressed could lead to “disastrous consequences”.
According to the NYT report, Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t take part in the conversations, and there was no suggestion that the Russian service had decided to emplace the munitions, which would sprucely escalate the war.
While Mr Kirby said he didn’t have any comment on the details in the report, a statement transferred to AFP said any commentary on the use of nuclear munitions by Russia are “deeply concerning,” and said the United States takes them seriously.
At the same time, he said, the US sees “no suggestions that Russia is making medications for similar use.”
The US has been advising Moscow for weeks over public commentary from top Russian officers that they could use nuclear munitions in Ukraine in certain cases, particularly if they felt there was a trouble to Russian territorial integrity.
The most recent trouble came from former Russian chairman and elderly security council functionary Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s ideal to reclaim all its homes enthralled by Russia, which include the Donbas region and Crimea, would be a “trouble to the actuality of our state.” That, Medvedev said, would be “a direct reason” to bring nuclear deterrence.
Still, on Wednesday, Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Western media was “designedly pumping up the content of the use of nuclear munitions.”
Moscow does “not have the fewest intention to take part in this,” he said, calling the NYT report “veritably reckless”. In September Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s public security counsel, said that the United States has advised Russia at “veritably high situations” of “disastrous consequences” for using nuclear arms.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell advised on October 13 that Russian forces would be “annihilated” by the West if Putin uses nuclear munitions against Ukraine.
But in response, the Russian foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Moscow was “forcefully convinced that in the current delicate and turbulent situation — a consequence of reckless and shameless conduct aimed at undermining our public security — the top precedence is to help any military clash of nuclear powers”.
The portentous statement also called on other nuclear powers to “abandon dangerous attempts to infringe on each other’s vital interests”.
