After weeks of apocalyptic atomic innuendo, Russia issues a statement reaffirming its long-standing policies on the use of nuclear weapons — a possible sign that the Kremlin is trying to cool the escalatory rhetoric it employed throughout October.
“Russia is strictly and consistently guided by the tenet that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” said the statement on the Russian Foreign Ministry website.
A woman stands next to the remains of a residential building that was destroyed Tuesday by a Russian missile in Mykolaiv, Ukraine.Throughout October, Russian state television hosts — and even some officials, such as former President Dmitry Medvedev — openly called for the use of nuclear weaponsDefense Department spokesman John Kirby told NBC News on Wednesday that the U.S. “continues to monitor this as best we can, and we see no indications that Russia is making preparations for such use.
Concerns over Russia’s possible use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine had lessened recently, the sources said.Putin himself has given mixed signals about Russia’s threshold for nuclear use. After he signed documents integrating the four eastern Ukrainian regions into the Russian Federation, Putin said Russia would use all means at its disposal to defend them.
The weeks that followed were marked by a flurry of accusations from Moscow that Ukraine was preparing to detonate a so-called dirty bomb laced with radioactive material on its own territory in hope of framing Russia.
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