KYIV: The world should prepare for the possible use by Russia of nuclear weapons, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalists on Saturday (Apr 16), repeating an earlier warning.
“We shouldn’t wait for the moment when Russia decides to use nuclear weapons,” he said in an interview with Ukrainian news media.
“We must prepare for that.”
Anti-radiation medicine and air raid shelters would be needed, he said. The Russians, he said, “can use any weapon, I’m convinced of it”.
The interview was relayed by six Ukrainian news websites and also broadcast by the Ukrainian presidency on Telegram.
Already on Friday, Zelenskyy had warned that the world should be worried about the threat Russian President Vladimir Putin posed, echoing comments by United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns.
Burns said on Thursday that Russia’s battlefield setbacks raised the risk that Putin could deploy a tactical or low-yield nuclear weapon.
The Kremlin said that it had placed Russian nuclear forces on high alert shortly after the assault began on Feb 24, but the US says that it has not seen any sign of unusual nuclear movements.
Moscow has said that it would use a nuclear weapon on Ukraine in the case of an “existential threat” against Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN in a recent interview.
Russian military doctrine includes the “escalate to de-escalate” principle of launching a small nuclear weapon to regain the initiative in war.
US President Joe Biden is “deeply concerned about avoiding a third World War, about avoiding a threshold in which nuclear conflict becomes possible”, said Burns.
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