Russia’s Medvedev warns West over discussing nuclear weapons for Ukraine
MOSCOW — Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.
This as Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of Greater London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers say.
The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested that US President Joseph R. Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons, though there were fears such a step would have serious implications.
“American politicians and journalists are seriously discussing the consequences of the transfer of nuclear weapons to Kyiv,” Mr. Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, said on Telegram.
Mr. Medvedev said that even the threat of such a transfer of nuclear weapons could be considered as preparation for a nuclear war against Russia.
“The actual transfer of such weapons can be equated to the fait accompli of an attack on our country,” under Russia’s newly updated nuclear doctrine, he said.
RUSSIAN ADVANCES
The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase after Moscow’s forces made some of their biggest territorial gains and the United States allowed Kyiv to strike back with US missiles.
“Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine,” independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.
The Russian army captured almost 235 square kilometers (sq. km.) in Ukraine over the past week, a weekly record for 2024, it said.
Russian forces had taken 600 sq. km. in November, it added, citing data from DeepState, a group with close links to the Ukrainian army that studies combat footage and provides frontline maps.
Russia began advancing faster in eastern Ukraine in July just as Ukrainian forces carved out a sliver of its western region of Kursk. Since then, the Russian advance has accelerated, according to open-source maps.
Russia’s forces are moving into the town of Kurakhove, a stepping stone towards the logistical hub of Pokrovsk in Donetsk, and have been exploiting the vulnerabilities of Kyiv troops along the frontline, analysts said.
“Russian forces recently have been advancing at a significantly quicker rate than they did in the entirety of 2023,” analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a report.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in its Monday update that 45 battles of varying intensity were raging along the Kurakhove part of the frontline that evening.
The Institute for the Study of War report and pro-Russian military bloggers say Russian troops are in Kurakhove. Deep State said on its Telegram messaging app on Monday that Russian forces are near Kurakhove.
“Russian forces’ advances in southeastern Ukraine are largely the result of the discovery and tactical exploitation of vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s lines,” Institute analysts said in their report.
Russia says it will achieve all of its aims in Ukraine no matter what the West says or does.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said peace cannot be established until all Russian forces are expelled and all territory captured by Moscow, including Crimea, is returned.
But outnumbered by Russian troops, the Ukrainian military is struggling to recruit soldiers and provide equipment to new units.
Mr. Zelensky has said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main objectives were to occupy the entire Donbas, spanning the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and oust Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region, parts of which they have controlled since August. — Reuters
