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Russia has repeated threated the use of nuclear weapons against the United States and other Western nations such as members of the European Union. Russia has sent their nuclear weapon equipped planes into other nations airspaces without permission and sailed its nuclear armed ships and submarines though other nations coastal waters without permission. However, with the advent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, their threatening rhetoric has increases steadily.
A Russian state TV host recently issued a warning that if the Ukraine war escalates to a “nuclear phase” then Russia will strike the U.S. with strategic nuclear weapons. Yevgeny Satanovsky is a Russian political commentator and president of Russia’s Institute of the Middle East. He issued the warning in a video clip that has gone viral.
Anton Gerashchenko is an adviser to the Ukrainian Internal Affairs Ministry. He shared the Satanovsky clip on his Twitter page on June 12th. The video was translated by Gerashchenko and has been viewed more than one hundred thousand times.
On June 9th, Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would begin deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus on July 8th. This was just days before a NATO summit was set to be held in Lithuania which borders Russia.
Satanovsky made a statement on Russian TV. He said, “The question is, will it all reach the nuclear phase or not? Because if it keeps going like this, it will definitely happen. And it won't be tactical [but strategic] nuclear weapons that we'll be striking at Ukraine, believe me, the United States of America, and all the targets that need to be in the crosshairs. They have been there since Soviet times and those in the U.S., and those in Europe, and those in other places where American nuclear weapons are concentrated, where there are American military bases. “So, I wish that on the way to the nuclear phase we could finish off the enemy without crossing the Rubicon. But if we have to, what can we do?”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian commentators and officials have stated that Russia was prepared to use nuclear weapons in the conflict. In April of this year, Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, said that the probability of nuclear weapons being used was growing by the day. He said that nuclear weapons were the “backbone that holds the state together.” Medvedev was Putin’s stand in President between 2008 and 2012. He now serves as deputy of Russia’s Security Council and has issued nuclear threats frequently.
Medvedev attended an educational event in late April at which he said, “In my opinion, [concerns about climate change] is nothing compared to the prospect of being at the epicenter of an explosion with a temperature of 5,000 Kelvin (scale), a shock wave of 350 meters per second and a pressure of 3,000 kilograms per square meter, with penetrating radiation, that is, ionizing radiation and an electromagnetic pulse. Is there such a prospect today? (Unfortunately), yes. And it is growing every day for well-known reasons.” Previously, in January, he said in a post discussing NATO support for Ukraine’s military, “Defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger a nuclear war.”