The US has warned Russia, both publicly and privately, that the consequences of using nuclear weapons would be “catastrophic”. “We’ve made it very clear, publicly and privately, for Russians to stop talking about nuclear weapons,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview on CBS News’ 60 Minutes, which aired yesterday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin indirectly threatened the use of nuclear weapons when he announced the partial deployment of reservists in a televised speech on Wednesday. Russia will use all “available means” to protect its territory, Putin said. “It’s not a bluff.” “Those who are trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the tide can also turn in their direction,” Putin said.
Blinken said in a TV interview on the sidelines of the UN general debate in New York that it was “very important that Moscow hear from us and be told that the consequences would be dire. And we made that very clear,” Blinken said. Any use of nuclear weapons “obviously would have catastrophic consequences for the country that uses them, but also for many others.”
Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to US President Joe Biden, said in another interview shortly before that the US had warned Russia “at a very high level” about the “catastrophic consequences” of using nuclear weapons. The United States and its allies “would resolutely respond,” Sullivan told CBS’s Face the Nation. “We made it clear what that would mean,” Sullivan said.
Zelenskyy doesn’t believe Putin’s bluff
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made it clear that he takes nuclear threats seriously. “Maybe it was a bluff yesterday. Now it could be a reality,” Zelenskyi told US broadcaster CBS News in an interview published yesterday. Zelenskyy referred to the fighting around the Russian-occupied Ukrainian nuclear plant Zaporizhia and said: “He (Putin, ed.) wants to scare the world. These are the first steps in his nuclear blackmail. I don’t think he’s bluffing.”