Russia will face “catastrophic consequences” if it deploys nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the US has warned Kremlin officials.
Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said on Sunday night that the US had “communicated directly, privately to the Russians at very high levels” how it would respond if Vladimir Putin carried out the nuclear strike threat he made during an address last week.
“If Russia crosses this line, there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia. The United States will respond decisively,” Mr. Sullivan told NBC’s Meet the Press program.
Mr. Sullivan did not describe the nature of the planned response but said the US had privately “spelled out in greater detail exactly what that would mean” to Moscow.
It came as Putin’s foreign minister said on Sunday that annexed areas of Ukraine would be protected like Russian territory. Referendums in those areas are continuing, with Ukrainians under pressure from armed Moscow forces to cast their ballots.
Some of Putin’s allies, including the speaker of the State Duma, publicly broke ranks on Sunday to criticize the way in which conscripts are being recruited, amid reports of elderly and ill men being drafted after the Russian president announced a partial mobilization order.
Putin made the nuclear threat in an address when he said Russia had “various weapons of destruction” at its disposal and would use “all the means available”, before adding that he was not “bluffing”.
While the threat is seen by some as an attempt to assert control after a series of embarrassing defeats in Ukraine, Nato’s nuclear powers have started ramping up vigilance and deterrence.
In a separate interview on Sunday, Mr Sullivan said Putin’s nuclear threats were a “matter that we have to take deadly seriously”.
Read the original article on the Telegraph.
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