“Given the potential hopelessness of President Putin and Russia’s leadership, given their military failures to date, none of us can carelessly grasp the threat posed by the potential use of tactical or low-power nuclear weapons,” Burns said in a speech in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Kremlin set a high alert on its nuclear forces shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, but the United States has not seen “much practical evidence” of developments in the area, which added to the CIA’s director.
“We are obviously very worried. I know that [ASV] the president [Džo] “Biden is deeply concerned about preventing World War III, about breaking the threshold for a nuclear conflict,” said Burns.
Russia has many tactical nuclear weapons that are less powerful than the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.
Russia’s military doctrine includes the principle of “escalation de-escalation”, which provides for the first blow with a low-power nuclear weapon to regain initiative in the event of a bad situation in a conventional conflict with the West.
According to this hypothesis, “NATO would intervene militarily on the ground in Ukraine during this conflict, and President Biden has made it clear that this is not expected,” Burns said.
Burns, recalling his former post as US ambassador to Russia,
sharply described Putin as a “retaliatory apostle” who had lived in a dangerous “combination of resentment, ambition and insecurity” over the years.
“Every day, Putin demonstrates that a fall in power can be at least as devastating as an increase in power,” Burns said.
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