Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has trashed US reports, which claimed that Moscow thought of using nuclear weapons on Ukraine.
“This belongs in the category of speculation that various newspapers tend to publish. I don’t think this needs any comments,” he said when asked to comment on reports that Russia could use a nuclear weapon to strike Ukraine in 2022.
Earlier, Peskov said that Western leaders exercise nuclear rhetoric on a daily basis, and Moscow is not interested in participating in these exercises. Peskov also stated that Moscow can use nuclear weapons only under the conditions that are specified by its nuclear doctrine.
According to CNN, Washington was extremely concerned that Russia could use a tactical nuclear bomb on Ukraine after suffering a military setback in Kherson.
“That’s what the conflict presented us, and so we believed and I think it’s our right to prepare rigorously and do everything possible to avoid that happening,” the first senior administration official told CNN.
The first senior administration official said that the National Security Council held several meetings between late summer and fall of 2022 to establish plans “in the event of either a very clear indication that they were about to do something, attack with a nuclear weapon, or if they just did, how we would respond, how we would try to preempt it or deter it.”
A second senior official clarified the administration’s concerns, saying, “Our fear was not just hypothetical — it was also based on some information that we picked up.” Therefore, careful planning was done to make sure that everything was ready in case this hitherto unimaginable scenario came true.
The official reportedly said, “I don’t think many of us coming into our jobs expected to be spending significant amounts of time preparing for a scenario which a few years ago was believed to be from a bygone era.”
According to the CNN report, there were concerns around a possible nuclear strike on Ukraine when Russian forces were forced to go on the back foot and retreat from Kherson following a Ukrainian blitzkrieg-like counteroffensive.
The administration held the opinion that a loss this severe may serve as a “potential trigger” for the use of nuclear weapons.
“If significant numbers of Russian forces were overrun — if their lives were shattered as such — that was a sort of precursor to a potential threat directly to Russian territory or the Russian state,” the first senior administration official said. “In Kherson at that time, there were increasing signs that Russian lines could collapse. Tens of thousands of Russian troops were potentially vulnerable.”
Meanwhile, US authorities were concerned that a fresh false flag tale about a dirty bomb in Ukraine, which they alleged was being spread by Russia’s propaganda apparatus, may be a pretext for a Russian nuclear strike.
It was learned by Western intelligence services that Russian officials were now openly contemplating a nuclear attack in their conversations. And while the US was never made aware of any intelligence suggesting that Russia was preparing to use its nuclear weapons to launch such an assault.
However, the US officials were unsure about their ability to find out if Russia was putting tactical nuclear weapons in place. “If what they were going to do is use a tactical nuclear weapon, particularly a very low-yield tactical nuclear weapon, and particularly if they were only going to use one or a very small number, it was not one hundred percent clear to us that we necessarily would have known,” this senior administration official noted.
Additionally, the US collaborated closely with its partners to prepare for a potential nuclear assault by Russia and to alert Moscow to the potential repercussions of such an attack.
“We conducted several quiet conversations with core allies to go through our thinking,” the first senior administration said. “That’s a hallmark of our entire approach— that we are better and stronger doing this stuff when we’re aligned with our allies.”
Having said that, the Russian President, as well as his allies, continue to make intermittent threats to the West, hinting nuclear strike wasn’t off the table if the war was to escalate and involve European countries.
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