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Business News/ News / World/  ‘In our military doctrine’: What Russia said on nuclear strike in Ukraine. Read here
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‘In our military doctrine’: What Russia said on nuclear strike in Ukraine. Read here

The decision to use Russia's vast nuclear arsenal, the biggest in the world, rests with the Russian president, currently Vladimir Putin.

FILE PHOTO: Russia's President Vladimir Putin (3rd L) visits the National Defence Control Centre (NDCC) to oversee the test of a new Russian hypersonic missile system called Avangard, which can carry nuclear and conventional warheads, in Moscow, Russia ( File photo/Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS ) (REUTERS)Premium
FILE PHOTO: Russia's President Vladimir Putin (3rd L) visits the National Defence Control Centre (NDCC) to oversee the test of a new Russian hypersonic missile system called Avangard, which can carry nuclear and conventional warheads, in Moscow, Russia ( File photo/Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS ) (REUTERS)

LONDON : The written words in the military doctrine of Russia were quoted by Alexander Grushko, Russia's deputy foreign minister was asked about a preemptive tactical nuclear strike on Ukraine. 

Grushko ruled out a possibility of a nuclear strike on the east European country with whom Russia has been in a war like situation since 24 February when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a special military operation on Ukraine. 

"We have a military doctrine - everything is written there," Alexander Grushko was quoted by state news agency RIA as saying.

According to the military doctrine, the use of nuclear weapons is allowed if they - or other types of weapons of mass destruction - are used against it, or if the Russian state faces an existential threat from conventional weapons.

The decision to use Russia's vast nuclear arsenal, the biggest in the world, rests with the Russian president, currently Vladimir Putin.

Russia's invasion has killed thousands of people, displaced nearly 10 million, and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States - by far the world's biggest nuclear powers.

US Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns said on Saturday that Putin believes he cannot afford to lose in Ukraine and cautioned that the West could not ignore the risk of the use of tactical nuclear weapons by Moscow.

"We don't see, as an intelligence community, practical evidence at this point of Russian planning for a deployment or even use of tactical nuclear weapons," Burns said.

He cautioned, though, that "the stakes are very high for Putin's Russia."

Will there be a nuclear strike?

A decree signed by Putin on 2 June 2020, said Russia views its nuclear weapons as "exclusively a means of deterrence".

It repeats the phraseology of the military doctrine but adds details about four circumstances under which a nuclear strike would be ordered. These include reliable information of a ballistic missile attack on Russia and an enemy's attack "on critical state or military installations of the Russian Federation, the incapacitation of which would lead to the disruption of a response by nuclear forces."

Putin, who has repeatedly expressed resentment over the way the West treated Russia after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, says Ukraine has been used by the United States to threaten Russia.

He justified his 24 February order for a special military operation by saying Ukraine had persecuted Russian speakers and the United States was keen to enlarge the NATO military alliance in a way that would endanger Russia.

US President Joe Biden casts Putin's invasion of Ukraine as a fight in a much broader global battle between democracy and autocracy. He has also called Putin a war criminal and has said the former KGB spy cannot remain in power.

Ukraine dismisses Russian claims that it persecuted Russian speakers and says it is fighting for its survival. Russia denies Ukrainian and Western accusations that its forces committed war crimes.

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Published: 10 May 2022, 02:57 PM IST
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