Warnings about nuclear escalation in Ukraine are now being issued with increasing frequency and urgency, due to dramatic changes in policy by some of Kyiv’s main western supporters.
Some European countries, including Britain, France and Germany, and the United States, have changed course, giving Ukraine the green light to use their weapons against sites within Russia. The latter two limited their permission to Ukrainian strikes aimed at defending Kharkiv province—although, according one report, Joe Biden may even lift that geographic restriction, as well. These steps are responses to devastating Russian strikes on Ukraine, many from points beyond its reach.
These changes in western policy—plus the French president Emmanuel Macron’s plans to send French troops to train Ukrainian forces on site and even possibly to fight—have heightened anxieties that Russia may undertake nuclear escalation in retaliation. Vladimir Putin has alluded to this possibility since the day he invaded Ukraine, as have other senior Russian officials, most notably Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the security council of Russia, who previously served as prime minister and president, and may hold the record within Russian officialdom for the frequency of nuclear threats.
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