Russia said today it still maintains an emergency hotline with the US and NATO to resolve crises as nuclear risks intensify amid the most dangerous confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cold War, reported Reuters.
The two-and-a-half-year-old war in Ukraine is entering what Russian politicians call its most dangerous phase as Russian forces advance and the United States considers whether to allow Kiev to strike deep into Russian territory with Western missiles .
On September 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Western approval of such a decision would mean “direct intervention of NATO countries– USA and the European Union, in Ukraine”.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, who is in charge of relations with Europe and NATO, told the state news agency RIA Novosti that Moscow believes the military alliance is increasing the role of nuclear weapons in its strategy.
Grushko said that Russia is amending its nuclear doctrine to send a signal “so that opponents have no illusions about our readiness to ensure the security of the Russian Federation by all available means”.
Putin is changing Russia's nuclear doctrine to give Russia a lower threshold for using such weapons in response to a conventional attack.
The United States defines China as the biggest competitor and Russia as the biggest state threat, while President Joe Biden believes that this century will be marked by existential competition between democracies and autocracies.
The so-called hotline between Moscow and Washington was established in 1963 to reduce the misinterpretations of what was happening that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, allowing direct communication between American and Russian leaders.
The Russian-American hotline, currently a secure computer communications system, has been used during major crises such as the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the September 11, 2001 attacks, and after the US invasion of Iraq two years later.
In addition to the hotline for leaders, there are nuclear hotlines between the Pentagon and the Russian Ministry of Defense established during the Cold War to reduce the risk of nuclear war.
After Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, an additional “conflict resolution“ line between the Russian and US militaries to prevent escalation to a Russo-US war.
In July, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov contacted his American counterpart, Lloyd Austin, regarding suspicions that Ukraine was planning an attack on Russia. “The New York Times” reported that Austin had taken a call from Belousov on July 12 about a covert Ukrainian operation planned against Russia that Moscow believed had US approval.
In addition, there is a hotline between NATO and Russia established in 2013 to reduce misunderstandings in crisis situations.