“Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, and the military setbacks they have faced thus far, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by the potential resort to tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons,” Burns said in a speech in Atlanta. .
The Kremlin had put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert shortly after the attack on Ukraine began on February 24, but the United States did not see much “practical evidence” of actual deployments of these weapons that would cause more concern, Burns added during his speech to Students at the University of Georgia.
“We are certainly very concerned,” Burns continued. “I know President Biden is deeply concerned about avoiding World War III, and about avoiding the threshold at which nuclear conflict becomes possible.”
Russia has many tactical nuclear weapons, which are less powerful than the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.
Russian military doctrine is characterized by a principle called escalation for de-escalation, which may include a first strike with a low-yield nuclear weapon to regain the initiative if things go wrong in a conventional conflict with the West.
But under this assumption, “NATO will intervene militarily on the ground in Ukraine in the context of this conflict (…) and as President Biden has made very clear, this is likely,” according to Burns.
Recalling his work as US ambassador to Russia, Burns addressed very harsh words to Putin, calling him a “messenger of vengeance” who over the years stood amid a “combustible mixture of grievance, ambition and insecurity.”
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