Security hawk says Russia will take more steps up nuclear ‘ladder of escalation’

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By Vladimir Soldatkin

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) – Russia will keep sending nuclear warning signals to its enemies in the West until they get the message, an influential foreign policy hawk said on Wednesday.

Security expert Sergei Karaganov has consistently urged President Vladimir Putin to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons, and in the past has even advocated a pre-emptive strike on a NATO country.

Putin has said that Russia does not need to resort to nuclear weapons in order to achieve victory in the Ukraine war. But in September he said Moscow was extending the list of scenarios under which it would consider using such weapons.

Karaganov told Reuters he hoped that strikes against Western countries would not happen. But he said the changes announced by Putin to Russia’s nuclear doctrine were part of an effort to “sober up our Western partners, especially the Europeans”.

“That’s exactly it…There will be steps up the ladder of nuclear escalation, of which several have been made, (and) there will be more. Until finally the Europeans run away,” he said.

Since the start of the Ukraine war, Putin has made a series of statements interpreted by the West as nuclear threats. In September, he signalled that Moscow would consider responding with nuclear weapons if the U.S. and its allies allowed Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with long-range Western missiles.

He has also staged a series of nuclear exercises, changed Russia’s position on major arms treaties and announced the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in its ally Belarus, which borders three NATO countries.

Russia says it is the West that is raising the risk of a nuclear confrontation by arming Ukraine. It accuses the U.S. and its allies of using Ukraine as an instrument in a proxy war aimed at inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia.

Karaganov argues that Russia needs to restore the West’s fear of nuclear weapons in order to deter its enemies.

“They have stopped being afraid of war. And especially the Europeans. They are climbing into a third world war right before our eyes,” he said.

“They must be stopped, including by going up the ladder of nuclear escalation and informing them in various ways – both military-technical and by changing the (Russian nuclear) doctrine – that they will be the first to die in this war.”

He was speaking on the fringes of an annual conference, the Valdai forum, where Putin will speak on Thursday and is likely to respond to questions from Russian and Western experts about nuclear policy, the Ukraine war and the future of Russia-U.S. relations under a new Donald Trump presidency.