Nuclear threats from a nuclear superpower like Russia are highly irresponsible, NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană said after the Kremlin leader launched the most explicit nuclear threat since the start of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The official noted that this is in the logic of psychological intimidation rather than in real intentions, IPN reports.
In his address to the nation on February 29, Russian leader Vladimir Putin threatened that “strategic nuclear forces are in a state of full readiness for guaranteed use.” In response, NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană said such statements are irresponsible and are meant to put psychological pressure on the entire humanity.
“We have seen such use of nuclear threats from Russian leaders for at least two years, since the war in Ukraine started. And this, from a nuclear superpower like Russia. This is highly irresponsible because when you possess such weapons, you also have an obligation for restraint. It is part of their arsenal of psychological pressure intimidation. It is a speech that is in the logic of psychological intimidation rather than in real intentions,” Mircea Geoană said in an interview with El País daily.
“We don’t see any imminent threat of Russia using such weapons. But such statements are very dangerous because they erode trust in the field of nuclear weapons. Russia knows the consequences of such an eventuality. We know that this is mainly the same bombastic way of blasting the West and describing the war that he started in Ukraine as a war of civilizations or when he maintains that the West is trying to destroy Russia, which is total nonsense.”
According to the NATO official, Putin has made a series of strategic misjudgments: he misjudged the resistance of the Ukrainian people and believed that NATO would return to the pre-1997 borders. NATO now has among its members two countries, Sweden and Finland, which had been neutral, in the Swedish case for more than 200 years.
