Russia said the West was playing with fire by considering allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with Western missiles and cautioned the United States on Tuesday that World War Three would not be confined to Europe.
“Americans unequivocally associate conversations about Third World War as something that, God forbid, if it happens, will affect Europe exclusively,” Lavrov said.
Russia’s 2020 nuclear doctrine sets out when its president would consider using a nuclear weapon: broadly as a response to an attack using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction or conventional weapons “when the very existence of the state is put under threat.”
RUSSIA’S RESPONSE
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said earlier this month that the assault on Russia’s Kursk region showed that Kremlin threats of retaliation were a bluff.
Russia has said that Western weaponry, including British tanks and US rocket systems, have been used by Ukraine in Kursk. Kyiv has confirmed using U.S. HIMARS missiles to take out bridges in Kursk.
The New York Times reported that the United States and Britain provided Ukraine with satellite imagery and other information about the Kursk region in the days after the Ukrainian attack.
