Russia may be forced to use a nuclear weapon if Ukraine’s counteroffensive succeeds, senior Russian official and former Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev has said, the latest in a series of nuclear threats made during Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Medvedev, who served as president of Russia
from 2008 to 2012, has struck a hawkish tone throughout Moscow’s invasion of
Ukraine, repeatedly raising possibility of nuclear conflict.
Last April, he warned of Russian nuclear
expansion should Sweden and Finland join NATO. Helsinki joined the defense
alliance later that month, while Stockholm’s path to NATO membership was
cleared earlier this month after Turkey dropped its objections.
In September 2022, Medvedev said strategic
nuclear weapons could be used to defend territories incorporated into Russia
from Ukraine.
In January this year, as NATO member states debated new weapons shipments to
Ukraine, Medvedev said defeat for Russia in the war could lead to nuclear
conflict.
On Sunday, July 31, he threatened nuclear weapons use.
“Just imagine that the offensive… in tandem with NATO, succeeded and ended up
with part of our land being taken away. Then we would have to use nuclear
weapons by virtue of the stipulations of the Russian Presidential Decree,” said
Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, in a Telegram post.
“There simply wouldn’t be any other solution,” the former Russian president
added. “Our enemies should pray to our fighters that they do not allow the
world to go up in nuclear flames.”
“The loss of a nuclear power in a conventional war can provoke the outbreak of
a nuclear war,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram in January. “Nuclear powers do not
lose major conflicts on which their fate depends.
“This should be obvious to anyone. Even to a Western politician who has
retained at least some trace of intelligence.”
Medvedev’s remarks show that Russia believes it could potentially lose the war
following nearly 18 months of fighting.
They also came just hours after Russia’s Defense Ministry accused Kyiv of
attacking Moscow with drones.
Russia has about 4,477 deployed and reserve
nuclear warheads, including around 1,900 tactical nuclear weapons, according to
the Federation of American Scientists.
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