Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that “the whole world” should be “worried” regarding the risk that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, cornered by his military setbacks in Ukraine, will resort to a tactical nuclear weapon, echoing the warning of the director of the CIA.
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The head of US foreign intelligence, William Burns, said on Thursday that the threat posed by the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or “low-power” nuclear weapons by President Putin should not be “taken lightly” if he was to “sink into despair” in the face of the failures of his army.
Asked by the American channel CNN if he shared this concern, President Zelensky replied: “Not only me, I think the whole world, all countries must be worried”.
He explained that this concern was regarding “nuclear weapons” or “chemical weapons”. “They can do it”, “for them, people’s lives are worth nothing”, he insisted in this interview which will be broadcast in its entirety on Sunday, but of which CNN has posted an extract.
“Let’s not be worried, let’s be prepared,” he added. “But this is not a question for Ukraine”, it concerns “the whole world”, he hammered.
The Kremlin evoked quickly following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, the alert of its nuclear forces.
“We haven’t really seen any concrete signs such as deployments or military measures that might aggravate our concerns”, however nuanced Thursday the head of the CIA.
Russia has many tactical nuclear weapons, less powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, in accordance with its “escalation-de-escalation” doctrine which would be to first use a low-powered nuclear weapon to regain the advantage. in the event of a conventional conflict with the West.