NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated on Tuesday that the trans-Atlantic alliance had not seen any changes in Russia’s nuclear posture despite repeated threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin about deploying such weapons.
“We are monitoring closely what Russia is doing,” he said at a press conference. “We haven’t seen any changes in the nuclear posture. We are vigilant. We are sharing information. We have conveyed very clearly to Russia that there will be severe consequences if they use nuclear forces against Ukraine.”
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Stoltenberg’s comments on Tuesday come a day after Russia launched a massive bombardment of more than a dozen Ukrainian cities in retaliation for an explosion damaging the Kerch Bridge, which links Russia to the Crimean Peninsula. It conducted 84 cruise missiles and 24 drone attacks, about half of which Ukraine was able to intercept, the Ukrainian General Staff said.
At least a dozen civilians were killed, and roughly a hundred more were injured in the bombardment, the United Nations’s human rights office said on Tuesday in a statement. “We are gravely concerned that some of the attacks appear to have targeted critical civilian infrastructure.”
Putin threatened similar attacks on Monday at a meeting with members of Russia’s Security Council, according to Russian state media, Tass, warning, “If attempts continue to carry out terror attacks on our territory, Russia’s responses will be tough and by their scope correspond to the level of threats created for the Russian Federation.”
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President Joe Biden warned attendees at a fundraiser last week that this marks the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis [that] we have the direct threat of the use of a nuclear weapon, if in fact things continue down the path that they are going. … I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”
The White House later reiterated that it had not seen any reason to alter its nuclear posture. National security adviser Jake Sullivan warned late last month of “catastrophic consequences” should Russia launch a nuclear weapon, but neither he nor any other U.S. official has provided details on what a response could entail.
