Showdown: US Slams Russia over Nuclear War Threats

Showdown: US Slams Russia over Nuclear War Threats (Source nationalinterest.org)

A senior U.S. official slammed Russia on Friday for allegedly threatening to use nuclear weapons.

In an interview with Japan’s Kyodo News, Rose Gottemoeller, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for threatening to use nuclear weapons during the Ukraine crisis in February of last year. “We are concerned when there’s loose talk about nuclear weapons being useable, nuclear weapons being raised to higher alert levels,” Gottemoeller said, Kyodoreported. “There is no threat out there that would warrant talking about a role for nuclear weapons.” Gottemoeller was likely referring to comments Putin made in February 2014 indicating that Moscow would have to “point its warheads” at Ukraine should the country decide to join NATO. “It’s frightening not just to talk about this, but even to think about, that in response to such deployment, the possibility of such deployments—and one can’t theoretically exclude these deployments—that Russia will have to point its warheads at Ukrainian territory,” Putin said at the time, according to Western media reports. In a new documentary about the Ukraine Crisis last year, Putin also says that Moscow was ready to put nuclear forces on high alert. Gottemoeller’s comments come on the heels of another report that former Russian military officials have told their American counterparts that Moscow would consider using nuclear weapons over disputes involving Ukraine and the Baltics.

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