Under the headline in RT: “Here’s Why Putin Decided To Send a Nuclear Message to Washington,” Dmitry Suslov, member of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Deputy Director of World Economy and International Politics at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, and Valdai Club expert, wrote, originally in Rossiyskaya Gazeta: “Until recently, the desire to inflict a strategic defeat on us was considered insane and impossible, given that Russia is a nuclear superpower. But it turns out that it is taken seriously in some minds in the West. That is why the current level of nuclear deterrence has proved inadequate in the face of the U.S.-led bloc’s growing involvement in the conflict against Russia, which has already turned into discussions about strikes by Western long-range missiles deep into our territory.”
Suslov quotes Putin saying that, “the use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear conflict is possible in the event of a critical threat to the country’s sovereignty,” then adds, “I repeat: not the very existence of our state, but critical threats to its sovereignty.”
