Zelensky echoes CIA fears of Russian nuclear risk

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that “the whole world” should be “worried” about the risk that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, cornered by his military setbacks in Ukraine, might resort to a tactical nuclear weapon, echoing the warning from the director of the CIA. “Potential use of tactical nuclear weapons” The head of American foreign intelligence, William Burns, said on Thursday that the threat posed by the potential use of nuclear weapons should not be “taken lightly. tactics” or “weak power” by President Putin if he were to “sink into despair” over the failures of his army. Asked by US channel CNN whether he shared this concern, President Zelensky answered: “Not only me, I think that the whole world, all the countries must be worried”. He explained that this concern related to “nuclear weapons” or “chemical weapons”. “They can do it”, “for them, people’s lives are worth nothing”, he insisted in this interview which will be broadcast in its entirety on Sunday but from which CNN has posted an extract. many tactical nuclear weapons “Let’s not be worried, let’s be prepared”, he then added. “But this is not a question for Ukraine”, it concerns “the whole world”, he hammered. The Kremlin evoked quickly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, the alert of its nuclear forces. “We haven’t really seen any concrete signs such as deployments or military measures that could aggravate our concerns”, however nuanced Thursday the head of the CIA. Russia has many tactical nuclear weapons, of a power lower than the Hiroshima bomb, in accordance with its “escalation-de-escalation” doctrine which would consist in first using a low-power nuclear weapon to regain the advantage in the event of a conventional conflict with the West.