While they believe Putin’s threats are unlikely to materialise and do not signal a formal shift in the Kremlin’s nuclear strategy, Kyiv’s allies are increasing nuclear vigilance and deterrence, according to five western officials who spoke under the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
“If he thinks the threat is going to intimidate Ukraine into capitulating or giving up 20 per cent of its territory, or intimidate the rest of us away from helping Ukraine, the opposite has happened,” one US senior official said.
Two other western officials said that a nuclear strike against Ukraine would be unlikely to spark a retaliation in kind but would instead trigger conventional military responses from western states to punish Russia. One of them said: “There are a lot of red lines and they are probably not in the place where [Putin] says they are.”
The west’s assessment is that Putin’s warnings that he is “not bluffing” about launching nuclear attacks on Ukraine are designed to regain momentum after Russian setbacks on the battlefield. These threats come as Moscow prepares to annex occupied territories in eastern and southern Ukraine following referendums hastily staged by Kremlin proxies.
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