Russia retains the right to use nuclear weapons if it faces aggression from Western nations, according to Moscow’s top security official, Sergei Shoigu, in an interview published Thursday by the state-run TASS news agency.
Amended Nuclear Doctrine
Shoigu, who served for over a decade as Russia’s defence minister until he moved to head its powerful security council in a government reshuffle last year, cited amendments to Moscow’s nuclear doctrine approved by President Vladimir Putin last November.
Under the new terms, Russia could consider a nuclear strike in response to a conventional attack on Russia or its ally Belarus that “created a critical threat to their sovereignty and (or) their territorial integrity”.
“…in the event of foreign states committing unfriendly actions that pose a threat to the sovereignty and territory integrity of the Russian Federation, our country considers it legitimate to take symmetric and asymmetric measures necessary to suppress such actions and prevent their recurrence,” Shoigu said.
Shoigu’s comments come as U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have warned that Washington could walk away from trying to negotiate a peace settlement in Ukraine if there is no progress on a deal soon.
Since taking office in January, Trump has upended U.S. policy toward the three-year-old war, pressing Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire while easing pressure on Russia.
‘Long-Term Peace’
Trump’s Vice President JD Vance said it was time for Russia and Ukraine to either agree to a U.S. peace proposal “or for the United States to walk away from this process,” echoing a warning from Trump last week.
Speaking to reporters in India, Vance said the proposal called for freezing territorial lines “at some level close to where they are today” and a “long-term diplomatic settlement that hopefully will lead to long-term peace”.
“The only way to really stop the killing is for the armies to both put down their weapons, to freeze this thing,” he said.
A former Western official familiar with the U.S. proposal said it also called for the recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Trump-Zelenskyy Round 2
Meanwhile, President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy clashed again on Wednesday on efforts to end the three-year-old war in Ukraine, with the U.S. leader chiding his Ukrainian counterpart for refusing to recognize Russia’s occupation of Crimea.
Zelenskyy on Tuesday reiterated that Ukraine would never cede Crimea to Russia, which seized control of the peninsula in 2014 in a move that was condemned internationally. “There’s nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution,” he said.
Trump, who argued with Zelenskiy in a disastrous Oval Office meeting in March, called this an inflammatory statement that made peace harder to achieve. He said in a social media post that Crimea was lost years ago “and is not even a point of discussion”.
(With inputs from Reuters)
