The changes, announced by Russia in its nuclear doctrine are long overdue and likely to "cool passions" of its Western opponents, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday in an interview quoted by "Reuters".
Lukashenko, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, said the West had heard the nuclear signals being sent by Moscow even before the Kremlin leader announced the changes last month.
Putin said on September 25 that Russia was expanding the list of scenarios that could prompt it to consider launching a nuclear weapon, including if it had credible information about a massive cross-border attack on it involving planes, missiles or drones. He said Moscow would view any attack against it backed by a nuclear force as a joint attack.
The announcement was the Kremlin's response to discussions in the United States and Britain over whether or not to give Ukraine permission to launch long-range Western-supplied conventional missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia.
"This doctrine should have been renewed a long time ago," said Lukashenko, who last year agreed with Putin on the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
He told a Russian TV reporter that Western missiles would "have already bombed us, especially Russia," if the West had not heeded Putin's earlier nuclear signals. But the change in nuclear doctrine "probably cools their fervor,", he added.
Ukraine accused Russia of nuclear blackmail, and its President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to ignore the "red lines" of Putin. Moscow says its warnings are real, and Putin has said the US and its allies will fight Russia directly if they give Kiev the green light to launch US ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles deep into Russia.