MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia will retaliate against NATO countries that facilitate long-range missile strikes against Russian territory by Ukraine, foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin said in an interview published on Wednesday.
Naryshkin said changes announced by President Vladimir Putin to Russia’s nuclear doctrine meant it was in effect impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield.
“Our enemies are forced to admit that the determination of the Russian president to firmly defend the country’s fundamental interests by all available means narrows the room for manoeuvre for Washington and Brussels,” he told the magazine National Defence.
“Attempts by individual NATO allies to participate in providing for possible long-range strikes with Western weapons deep into Russian territory will not go unpunished.”
Ukraine used U.S. ATACMS missiles to strike Russian territory on Tuesday, taking advantage of newly granted permission from the outgoing administration of U.S. President Joe Biden on the 1,000th day of the war in Ukraine.
On the same day, Putin approved a policy document that lowers the threshold for Russia to use nuclear weapons in response to attacks by an enemy using conventional weapons.
“The military-political elites of the West are becoming increasingly aware of the seriousness of Russia’s intentions and the need for greater restraint in their actions in order to avoid getting involved in a direct military conflict with our country, which could lead to catastrophic consequences for them,” Naryshkin said.
The U.S. National Security Council has said it has not seen any reason to adjust the U.S. nuclear posture. But Naryshkin said the Russian changes, which Putin first announced in September, had been “met with caution” in the West.
“They understand that the adjustments announced by V.V. Putin largely devalue the efforts of the United States and NATO to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on our country, and the planned expansion of the list of grounds for the use of nuclear weapons effectively excludes the possibility of victory over the Russian Armed Forces on the battlefield,” he said, without saying what evidence he had for his assertions.
(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Mark Trevelyan and Anastasia Teterevleva, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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