In front of the College of Europe in Bruges, the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrella recalled that like Russia, Ukraine’s supporters “are not bluffing”.
Any nuclear attack by Russia against Ukraine will lead to a military response from the West “so powerful that the Russian army will be annihilated”, said Thursday the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.
Russian President Vladimir “Putin says he is not bluffing with the nuclear threat. He must then understand that the countries that support Ukraine, the European Union and its member states, the United States and NATO, do not They’re not bluffing either. Any nuclear attack on Ukraine will lead to a response, not a nuclear response, but a military response so powerful that the Russian army will be annihilated,” he told the College of Europe in Bruges. .
A change in the “nature of conflict”
“If Russia uses a nuclear weapon, whatever it is, against Ukraine, this will have serious consequences”, underlined then the secretary general of NATO Jens Stoltenberg, at the end of a meeting of ministers Defense of the Alliance in which Josep Borrell participated.
“Russia knows this (…) We will not go into the details of our response, but of course this will fundamentally change the nature of the conflict”, added Jens Stoltenberg.
“Any use of nuclear weapons, even a small weapon, will have consequences and Russia knows it,” he said.
But “the circumstances in which NATO could have to use nuclear weapons are extremely remote”, specified the secretary general of NATO.
“One thing is an attack on NATO allies and in that case Article 5 will of course be triggered. But as far as Ukraine is concerned, NATO is not a party to the conflict,” he said. he explained, implicitly dismissing the allies’ recourse to nuclear weapons for their response.
“Nato’s nuclear deterrent aims to deter any attack against the allies,” he insisted.
“We have very, very good information”
Moscow’s threats are taken very seriously by the members of the Atlantic Alliance. “They are very dangerous and irresponsible,” warned US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. “We have no indication at this time that Russia has changed its nuclear posture, but we are monitoring it 24/7,” he said.
“We have very, very good information,” said Jens Stoltenberg.
The former president and number two of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev assured that Moscow would defend the new annexed territories “including with strategic nuclear weapons”.
“We must take this rhetoric from Russia seriously, but we must not panic,” declared a European NATO official, observing that annexed territories had already been taken over by the Ukrainian army “without the scenario of the worse has happened.”