Amid growing tensions between Moscow and the West, Russia has started updating its Nuclear Doctrine! On June 24, 2024, senior Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that current realities prompted the world's biggest nuclear power to make such a move. Earlier, President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin hinted that his administration would update the nuclear doctrine in order to safeguard his country. Without elaborating, Peskov stressed: "President Putin has said that work is under way to bring the doctrine into line with current realities."
On June 23, a member of the Russian Parliament claimed that the move would help Moscow to reduce the decision-making time stipulated in official policy for the use of nuclear weapons in case of increasing threats. In May (2024), President Putin announced that Russia might change its official nuclear doctrine in order to set out the conditions under which such weapons could be used.
As per the current nuclear doctrine, Russia may use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or in the event of a conventional attack that poses an existential threat to the largest country in the world (by area), extending across 11 time zones and sharing land borders with 14 countries. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, some hawks within Russian politics have been asking the Vladimir Putin Administration to revise its nuclear doctrine. It seems that the Russian President has agreed to follow their advice!
As the US and its Western allies are backing Ukraine, the Kremlin has repeatedly claimed that it is fighting a Proxy War with the West! In the third week of June 2024, President Putin said that his country had no other option, but to change its nuclear doctrine as the potential enemies of Russia were working on "new elements" around lowering the threshold for nuclear use. He stated: "In particular, explosive nuclear devices of extremely low power are being developed. And, we know that there are ideas floating around in expert circles in the West that such means of destruction could be used."
According to defence analysts, the West's decision to provide further aid to Ukraine has prompted the Kremlin to update its nuclear doctrine. It may be noted that the US, too, has agreed to allow Ukraine to use American-made weapons in order to strike the Russian territories under certain circumstances! On June 24, the Kremlin summoned the US ambassador to Moscow over the Ukrainian drone and missile attacks that killed at least six people in Crimea and the Russian region of Belgorod. Russia blasted the US for the attack, making it clear that the use of US-made weapons inside the Russian territory would incur consequences. Analysts are of the opinion that the Russia-Ukraine War has triggered the biggest confrontation between the Kremlin and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Meanwhile, Sergei Ryabkov, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, told the Izvestia media outlet, that Moscow might downgrade diplomatic ties with certain Western countries, if they failed to alter their Russophobic approach (to relations with Russia). Commenting on Russia's nuclear doctrine, he stressed that it was drafted "in a different era and in different circumstances", adding that the discussions now "are being taken seriously by our opponents". Ryabkov further said: "I am not anticipating the outcome, but I urge our adversaries to think about what the President is saying. They are literally playing with fire… and must learn not to indulge in dangerous illusions, but to try to look at the world soberly and understand that we have immutable national interests which we are prepared to defend to the end."
The recent military alliance pact between Russia and North Korea, too, has triggered an alarm among the Western allies. During Putin's rare trip to Pyongyang on June 18, the Russian President and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed the deal to provide aid in case the other was attacked. As expected, Europe and the US have expressed serious concern over the Russia-North Korea deal.
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