Russia’s new nuclear strategy is a message to the West, according to the Kremlin

The Kremlin said on Thursday that President Vladimir Putin’s plans to change Russia’s nuclear policy should be seen as a warning to Western countries that there will be consequences if they attack Russia.

Putin said on Wednesday that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was hit with regular missiles. He also said that any attack on Russia that was backed by a nuclear power would be seen as a joint attack by Moscow.

The Kremlin’s choice to change Russia’s official nuclear doctrine comes as the US and UK are debating whether to let Ukraine fire Western-style missiles into Russia.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, said that changes had been made to a paper called “The Foundations of State Policy in the Sphere of Nuclear Deterrence.”

When reporters asked Peskov if the changes were a message to the West, he said, “This should be seen as a clear message.”

“This is a signal that warns these countries about the consequences if they participate in an attack on our country by various means, and not necessarily nuclear ones,” he said.

Peskov said that that the “unprecedented confrontation” that the world was seeing was caused by the “direct involvement of Western countries, including nuclear powers,” in the Ukraine war.

Peskov said that a choice would be made later on whether to post the nuclear papers or not.

Putin’s 2020 decree, which is now public, lays out Russia’s current nuclear policy. It says that Russia may use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the state’s survival.

When asked if refusing a post-Soviet ban on nuclear tests had been talked about as part of the changes, Peskov said he couldn’t answer because the meeting on Wednesday had been mostly secret.