The nuclear threat looms large in Ukraine war rhetoric

The nuclear threat surfaced strongly when Russian FM Sergei Lavrov said frankly, “If a third World War were to happen, it would involve nuclear weapons and be destructive.” He spoke on Wednesday, March 2, Day 6 of the Ukraine invasion, after on Tuesday he pointed the finger at Ukraine, accusing “the authorities set up in Kyiv to have embarked on dangerous games related to plans to acquire their own nuclear weapons.” Ukraine still has Soviet nuclear technologies and the means of delivery of such weapons. “We cannot fail to respond to this real danger,” Lavrov stressed.

DEBKAfile’s military analysts recall that Ukraine was in fact the world’s third nuclear power in the 1990s until the program was transferred to Russia when the Soviet Union broke up. However, as recently as 2005, Viktor Yushchenko, then Ukraine president, sold to China and Iran, X-55 missiles (NATO-coded AS-15) which can carry nuclear warheads and whose range is 3,200km. Kyiv has also been found dumping illicit nuclear items on the international black market for these commodities.

The threat was implicit in US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union message on Tuesday, when he said that Vladimir Putin had miscalculated and, “He has no idea what’s coming.” READ MORE