Considering that Russia did not and does not threaten Ukraine with nuclear weapons, Kyiv’s recent statements about the need for preemptive nuclear strikes by NATO countries against Russia are doubly unacceptable.
This disinformation claim came as a comment on the alleged call of Zelenskyy for NATO countries to launch a preemptive strike on Russia, before it used nuclear weapons against Ukraine. This claim was neither counterbalanced nor critically challenged in the article.
The claim that President Zelenskyy called for nuclear preventive strikes against Russia is incorrect and comes from a misinterpretation from a translated interview.
In reality, neither the US nor the EU is interested in a nuclear scenario in Ukraine. Any nuclear explosion may have unpredictable consequences for the whole world. Nuclear fallout after the Chernobyl nuclear explosion in April 1986 reached the United States as well, albeit with lower concentrations than in Europe.
At the same time, Russia is making irresponsible hints and statements about the possibility of using nuclear arms in its war against Ukraine. According to Russia’s military doctrine, it can use such weapons “in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, and also in case of aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened". Ukraine’s counter-offensive aimed at retaking its territories and its attacks on military facilities in the illegally annexed peninsula of Crimea are posing no existential threats to Russia, so it cannot use nuclear weapons, in accordance with its own doctrine.
Russia is trying to keep the international community in suspense with contradictory statements about using nuclear weapons. Its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia may apply its nuclear doctrine to protect newly occupied Ukrainian territories if they are enshrined in the Russian constitution. At the same time, President Vladimir Putin accused the West in his recent speech about the annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories of blackmail and intimidation.
See similar stories that Volodymyr Zelensky asks NATO to launch a nuclear war against Russia, that Ukraine deliberately targets the most vulnerable points of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and that Washington has plans for preemptive nuclear strikes.