US must not take Russia’s nuclear threat lightly, says former US Security Adviser
Former U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster said the U.S. must take Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine “seriously.”
McMaster, a retired US Army lieutenant general who served as a national security adviser under former President Donald Trump, said that Russia’s staging of a nuclear attack on Ukraine would be a “suicide weapon” while Moscow advised Washington on its nuclear policy. “Red line”.
“I think the message to [Putin] is that if you use a nuclear weapon, it’s a suicide weapon,” McMaster added that “the response from NATO and the United States doesn’t have to be nuclear.” Putin hinted last month that he was ready to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. In a national speech, the Russian leader called up to 300,000 reservists to help Russia and also threatened to use the country’s nuclear weapons in the face of Western aggression.
“It’s not a bluff,” Putin said. “And those trying to blackmail us with nukes should know that the weather vane can turn around and point at them.” US President Joe Biden has warned Putin against the idea of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, adding that it would “change the face of war like never before since World War II”.
Biden has said Moscow will become a global pariah if it uses weapons of mass destruction against the former Soviet state. Russia’s nuclear doctrine allows the country to use nuclear weapons under two conditions. First, when “Russia or its ally is attacked with weapons of mass destruction”, and second, “when the existence of the state is threatened”.
US must not take Russia’s nuclear threat lightly, says former US Security Adviser
McMaster claimed on Sunday that Putin was under “extreme pressure” amid the war in Ukraine. “Where we could be here is really on the verge of a real collapse of the Russian military in Ukraine, a moral collapse,” McMaster said. “They really must be at a breaking point. If you just look at the number of casualties, the huge territory they are trying to defend, and now, of course, Russia is trying to mobilize conscripts and send them to the front without training.
He claimed Putin’s nuclear threat is the “only tremor he has left” as the Russian leader wages war. “We should take it seriously,” McMaster said of the nuclear threat. “We have to do it, but we shouldn’t be intimidated by Ukrainian support.”
