Nuclear tensions are the highest they’ve been in 60-years and with the Kremlin issuing threats and statements of going nuclear is a dangerous game.
Professor Michael Clarke, former director-general of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), has said that NATO members have contacted their counterparts in Moscow giving them a stern warning of using nuclear weapons.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that the rhetoric coming out from Western leaders over the use of weapons is “provocative” and harmful.
Sky News asked Professor Clarke what reaction would the West give in response to a nuclear strike by Russia, he said, “When the tactical nuclear weapon threats were raised a few weeks ago, the US and three or four NATO members personally contacted their counterparts in Russia and in the Russian general staff to say ‘don’t even think about it’.
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“They won’t tell us what they said and nor should they because there has got to be some uncertainty about this in order to maintain a deterrent but what they seem to have said is first of all ‘we will not be passive’.
“‘We won’t just condemn you, we will do a lot about it. Second, we won’t go nuclear but we will go conventional and we have the conventional power to hit all of your nuclear infrastructure and facilities.
“If we even think that you’re going nuclear, if we see the preparations start – we might attack you’.
“That seems to have been the message.”
Clarke said while he could not be certain if NATO counterparts did send that message to Russia “there was a general belief that this is what was said.”
He added that NATO is “making it clear” to Moscow that a red line would be crossed if they were to use such weapons, he then warned it would “take Russia on as a military power by conventional means.”
The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday “We express our daily regret that Western heads of state engage in nuclear rhetoric every day,” he added that the West’s practice is “provocative.”
