Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland claimed during her visit to Kiev this past weekend that the reason why Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t used nuclear weapons in Ukraine was because of “harsh warnings” issued from Washington. “Russia has already made itself a pariah at the international level, but we made it crystal clear that the use of nuclear weapons would have dire consequences and face our firm response. After that, Russia switched to different tactics, launching attacks on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine,” Nuland said on Dec. 3. “Ukraine is winning this war, Putin is losing it, and we keep supporting you,” she concluded.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova rejected Nuland’s claim in a sharply worded statement. “Victoria Nuland has succeeded in defeating herself once again: first, controlled media and think tanks hyped up the threat of nuclear war coming from Russia, and now they are making attempts to shift the blame onto someone else by claiming that allegedly a nuclear Armageddon did not occur due to `harsh warnings’ while ignoring the fact that no one on this side of the border actually planned to unleash one,” she wrote in an opinion posted from her Telegram account and on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Telegram channel. “We have repeatedly confirmed Russia’s stance on preventing a nuclear war, in particular, in a recent statement which was specifically translated into English for those working in the U.S. Department of State,” referring to the Ministry’s statement on prevention of nuclear war. (https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1836575/
