The United States has privately warned Russia of “catastrophic” consequences if it uses nuclear weapons as part of the invasion of Ukraine, senior US officials have said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a thinly veiled threat to use nuclear weapons on Wednesday in a speech announcing the mobilization of reservists following Ukrainian conquests on the ground.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in an interview broadcast on Sunday, confirmed reports that the United States has been sending private warnings to Russia to avoid nuclear war.
“We have made it very clear to the Russians, publicly and privately, to end the loose talk about nuclear weapons,” Blinken told the CBS news program 60 Minutes in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
“It is very important that Moscow hears from us and knows from us that the consequences would be terrible. And we made that very clear,” said Blinken.
“Any use of nuclear weapons would of course have catastrophic consequences for the country using them, but also for many others.”
Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said in a separate interview Sunday that the United States had issued “very high-level” warnings to Russia about “catastrophic consequences” of using nuclear weapons.
The United States and its allies would “react decisively,” Sullivan said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
“We’ve said loud and clear what that will entail.”
Russia and the United States are the world’s largest nuclear powers, but regardless of the threat of planetary destruction, Russian military doctrine allows the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield to force an enemy to retreat.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, asked about Putin’s remarks at a press conference at the United Nations on Saturday, said only that Moscow’s doctrine was “an open document”.
No country has used nuclear weapons on the battlefield except for the United States in 1945 when they destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 200,000 people. Imperial Japan surrendered days later, ending World War II.
