Russian President Vladimir Putin this week approved changes to his country’s nuclear doctrine, formally changing the conditions under which Russia would consider using nuclear weapons and lowering the threshold. Moscow announced on Tuesday that Putin had signed changes to the doctrine officially known as “Fundamentals of state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence.” Ukraine launched its first attack deep into Russia It uses missiles provided by the USA.

The updated doctrine states that Russia will consider an attack by a non-nuclear state supported by a nuclear-capable country as a joint attack by both. This means that any attack on Russia by one country in the coalition could be seen as an attack by the entire group.

According to the doctrine, Russia could theoretically consider any major attack by non-nuclear Ukraine on its territory, even with conventional weapons, as sufficient to trigger a nuclear response; because Ukraine is supported by the nuclear-armed USA.

Putin has Threat of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine Many times since ordering a full-scale invasion of the country on February 24, 2022, and Russia has repeatedly warned the West that Washington would consider the United States and its allies if it allowed Ukraine to fire Western-made missiles deep into its territory. NATO allies will be directly involved in the war.

US officials said: Ukraine fired eight US-made ATACMS Missiles were launched into Russia’s Bryansk region early Tuesday, just days after President Biden allowed Ukraine to fire weapons deeper into Russian territory. ATACMS are powerful weapons with a maximum range of almost 300 km.

“This is the latest in a long line of nuclear rhetoric and signals emanating from Moscow since the beginning of the full-scale occupation,” Mariana Budjeryn, a senior research fellow at the Harvard Belfer Center, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine were first proposed last month.

“The previous version of the Russian doctrine, adopted in 2020, also allowed for a nuclear response to a large-scale conventional attack, but only in extreme cases where the existence of the state is at stake,” Budjeryn said. “This formulation has changed to extreme conditions that endanger Russia’s sovereignty. So what does this actually mean and who defines what serious threats to sovereignty might occur?”

Budjeryn said Russia had already used weapons capable of carrying nuclear payloads against Ukraine.

“Russia uses a number of missile launch systems that can also come with nuclear warheads. So these are dual-capable systems. For example, Iskander M short-range ballistic missiles. These were widely used by Russia in this war. So when an attack from Russia comes to Ukraine and it “When we see an Iskander missile, we don’t know whether it is nuclear-tipped or conventional-tipped,” he said.

Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleksandra Ustinova, who said she helped lobby the Biden administration to allow Ukraine to fire ATACMS deeper into Russia, told CBS News that she does not believe Putin will actually launch a nuclear strike.

“He keeps playing and acting like he’s going to do something,” Ustinova said. “I’ve been saying since day one that he’s a bully, and he’s not going to do this.”

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