CIA Director William Burns said on Saturday there was no evidence Russia would use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, although he warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin was increasingly bent on winning the war.
“The intelligence community is not seeing practical evidence that points, at this moment, to Russian plans to mobilize or even potentially use tactical nuclear weapons,” said the representative of the American agency, in a debate organized in Washington by the newspaper “Financial Times”. “.
Nuclear weapons known as tactics are those that can be used at close range, in missiles on the battlefield or that can be launched from planes and boats. They are different from strategic nuclear weapons, those that have been threatened for years by Russia and the United States, the biggest nuclear powers on the planet.
Shortly after the start of the war in Ukraine, on February 24, Putin signaled the possibility of using the Russian nuclear arsenal. At the time, the CIA suggested that the threat not be taken seriously.
Almost a month later, the director of the American agency continued without ruling out that Russia uses nuclear weapons, and asked that the possibility be seen as real, although he highlighted that there is no evidence that the risk exists, mainly because of Putin’s efforts to win the war.
“I think he’s in a state of mind where he believes he can’t afford to lose,” said Burns, who was US ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008.
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