If the West allows Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory, Russian President Vladimir Putin will retaliate. One of the options is to carry out a nuclear test to show its intentions, writes the agency “Reuters”, referring to opinions of military analysts.
As tensions between Moscow and the West over Ukraine enter a new and dangerous phase, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Joe Biden are in talks over whether to allow Kiev to use US long-range ATACMS missiles or British Storm Shadow missiles against targets in Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the West would enter into direct war with Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory with Western-made long-range missiles.
Ulrich Kuhn, an expert at the Institute for Peace and Policy Research in Hamburg, said he did not rule out Putin choosing to send some kind of nuclear message -- for example, testing a nuclear weapon in an attempt to intimidate the West. "This would be a dramatic escalation of the conflict," he said.
Russia has not conducted a nuclear weapons test since 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a nuclear explosion would signal the start of a more dangerous era, Kuhn said, warning that Putin may feel that he is seen as weak in responding to NATO's growing support for Ukraine. This may be a reason to order a nuclear test.
Professor Gerhard Mangot, a political scientist at the University of Innsbruck, is also of the opinion that Russia could carry out a nuclear test, but according to him, the chance of this is not very high.
„The Russians can carry out a nuclear test. They have made all the necessary preparations. "They can detonate a tactical nuclear weapon somewhere in the eastern part of the country just to show that they mean it when they say we will eventually resort to nuclear weapons," Mangot said.
Russia's UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzya told the UN Security Council on Friday that NATO would “be a direct party to hostilities against a nuclear power” if it allowed Ukraine to use longer-range weapons against Russia.
Russia, the world's largest nuclear power, is in the process of revising its nuclear doctrine - the circumstances under which Moscow will use nuclear weapons. Putin is pressured by the influential foreign policy “hawks” make it more flexible to open the door to a limited nuclear strike against a NATO country.