US believes Russian nuclear strike ‘unlikely’ – Reuters

Russia earlier vowed to retaliate against Ukraine’s use of American-made missiles

The US believes that it is unlikely that Russia would use nuclear weapons in response to Ukraine’s strikes deep into its territory with Western-supplied missiles, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing five people familiar with American intelligence.

According to the news agency, for several months US officials were locked in “an often divisive” debate whether outgoing President Joe Biden should finally authorize Kiev to strike internationally recognized Russian territory with an American-made ATACMS missile. While some in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department initially “feared lethal retaliation” against American or allied military bases and diplomats, sources told Reuters that “escalation concerns, including the nuclear fears, were overblown.”

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“The assessments were consistent: The ATACMS weren’t going to change Russia’s nuclear calculus,” an unnamed congressional aide briefed on the intelligence told the news agency. Other sources were quoted as saying that intelligence reports concluded that “nuclear escalation was unlikely,” and that assessment has “not changed” following Biden’s decision to lift restrictions on the use of ATACMS by Ukraine. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the use of Western-supplied long-range missiles would drastically “change the nature” of the conflict and insisted that such sophisticated weapon systems could not be operated without direct involvement of NATO personnel. In his video address on November 21, Putin said that Russia “reserves the right” to strike military targets outside of Ukraine and would “respond decisively and in kind in case of escalation of aggressive actions.” 

Putin delivered his warning hours after Russia struck a weapons factory in the Ukrainian city of Dnepr with its brand-new Oreshnik ballistic missile. The Russian Defense Ministry later vowed to retaliate against further Ukrainian strikes.

Earlier this month, Russia revised its nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons. According to the updated document, Moscow reserves the right to deploy its nuclear arsenal against a nuclear or conventional attack that creates “a critical threat to its sovereignty and/or territorial integrity.”