President Vladimir Putin has updated Russia’s nuclear doctrine, two days after his US counterpart Joe Biden granted Ukraine permission to strike targets deep inside Russia with American-made weapons.
Under the updated doctrine, Moscow will consider aggression from any non-nuclear state – but with the participation of a nuclear country – a joint attack on Russia.
The change comes as Russia claims Ukraine fired the US-made ATACMS missiles into the Russian region of Bryansk. The attack, if confirmed, would mark the first such use by Ukraine since Biden gave the green light.
The Russian government had previously signaled that the US approval would be a dangerous escalation of the war in Ukraine, now 1,000 days old.
The Kremlin began this fresh round of nuclear saber-rattling Tuesday, saying the revised military doctrine would in theory lower the bar to first use of nuclear weapons.
In a phone call with reporters, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov noted the changes mean that “the Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression using conventional weapons against it and/or the Republic of Belarus.”
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