Vladimir Putin’s spy chief just claimed the West is “secretly pushing” Ukraine to carry out nuclear attacks.
The New York Times reported last week that some Western officials thought US President Joe Biden may be looking to give Kyiv nuclear weapons, despite fears that could only escalate the war.
So on Tuesday, while meeting with the heads of security agencies of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service chief, Sergey Naryshkin, suggested the West was encouraging nuclear warfare.
According to Russian state news agency TASS, he claimed: “The Anglo-Saxons are secretly pushing Kyiv toward a dangerous escalation: to carry out nuclear terror attacks.”
He also claimed the West operates “like criminal authorities, following the logic of ‘you die today, I die tomorrow’.”
It’s worth noting Russia has been threatening to use its nuclear arsenal against the West ever since it invaded Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also slammed the suggestion that the US could give nuclear weapons to Kyiv.
He said those quotes from the New York Times were only attached to anonymous sources, so they do not feel a “shred of responsibility” on Tuesday.
He said the comments themselves were “absolutely irresponsible”, and that the West should listen carefully to Putin, who recently lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons.
The new rules around nuclear weapons suggest the use of western non-nuclear missiles by Kyiv against Russia could be enough for Moscow to turn to its own nukes.
The documentation change happened after the US gave Kyiv permission to use its long-range missiles to strike targets within Russia for the first time, after Moscow started to recruit North Korean troops to serve in the war.
Dmitry Medvedev, who worked as Russia’s president between 2008 and 2012, warned on Telegram that “the actual transfer of [nuclear] weapons can be equated to the fait accompli of an attack on our country” under Russia’s new nuclear doctrine, he claimed.
Meanwhile, UK foreign secretary David Lammy told Italian newspaper La Repubblica that Ukraine is on an “irreversible pathway” to join Nato after the war ends.