The government has been conversing privately with the Russian leadership for several months, despite President Joe Biden’s purposeful vagueness in public pronouncements about the long-term implications of Russian nuclear use.
In such signals, Russia has warned of the dire repercussions of using tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield and smaller, more precise nuclear weapons to intensify or de-escalate the conflict in Ukraine, according to sources quoted by The Washington Post.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which started on February 24, is being nuclearly deterred by the United States by keeping its retaliation operations under wraps.
No particular information has been provided on whether such private texts were exchanged after Russian President Vladimir Putin said that everything is on the table and that he is not “bluffing” as he tries to reclaim significant ground in eastern Ukraine.
This past Sunday, Biden openly discouraged the deployment of nuclear weapons, telling “60 Minutes” just to say, “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.”
James Action of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told the Washington Post that “if he truly thought very seriously about deploying nuclear weapons very imminently, he would almost certainly want us to know that.”
He would far prefer to threaten to use nuclear weapons and pressure us into making concessions than actually have to use nuclear weapons.
The advisory messages have been sent by the State Department, but officials declined to reveal what is contained in them.
Russia intends to annex four regions of eastern Ukraine after holding referendums. According to Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, if such regions were “admitted into Russia”, Russia would employ “any Russian weapon, including strategic nuclear ones” and maybe hypersonic missiles.
There is no turning back, Medvedev declared, “Russia has picked its course.”
The Biden administration points out that Russia has already threatened to deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine as part of its “special military operation” objectives.
Everyone must understand that this is one of, if not the most, serious incidents in which nuclear weapons may be deployed in decades, according to Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, who spoke to the Washington Post.
Even a so-called “limited nuclear war” will have utterly disastrous results.
In a televised interview, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Vadym Skibitskyi, stated that Russia would not think twice about using tactical nuclear weapons “to stop our offensive action and to destroy our state.”
