Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that “the whole world” should be “worried” about the risk that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, cornered by his military setbacks in Ukraine, might resort to a tactical nuclear weapon, echoing the warning of the director of the CIA.
“Potential use of tactical nuclear weapons”
The head of US foreign intelligence, William Burns, said on Thursday that the threat posed by the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons “or” low power “by President Putin should not be “taken lightly if he was to “sink into despair” in the face of the failures of his army.
Asked to say, by the American channel CNN, if he shared this concern, President Zelensky replied: “Not only me, I think the whole world, all countries must be worried”. He explained that this concern related to “nuclear weapons” or “chemical weapons”. “They can do it”, “for them, people’s lives are worth nothing”, he insisted in this interview which will be broadcast in its entirety on Sunday but of which CNN has posted an extract.
Russia has many tactical nuclear weapons
“Let’s not be worried, let’s be prepared,” he added. “But this is not a question for Ukraine”, it concerns “the whole world”, he hammered. The Kremlin evoked quickly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, the alert of its nuclear forces. “We have not really seen any concrete signs such as deployments or military measures that could aggravate our concerns”, however nuanced Thursday the head of the CIA.
Russia has many tactical nuclear weapons, less powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, in accordance with its “escalation-de-escalation” doctrine which would consist in first using a low-powered nuclear weapon to regain the advantage. in the event of a conventional conflict with the West.