By Lidia Kelly
(Reuters) – Changes to Russia's nuclear doctrine have been drafted and will be formalized where necessary, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, signaling renewed Moscow's concerns over the latest U.S. decision on missile strikes from Ukraine.
“They (the changes) have already been formulated in practical terms. They will be formalized where necessary,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin press secretary, told state news agency TASS in comments published on Tuesday.
The Kremlin on Monday recklessly recalled the reported decision by President Joe Biden's administration to allow Ukraine to fire US missiles deep into Russia and warned that Moscow will respond.
Russia, which began its all-out invasion of Ukraine a thousand days ago, has repeatedly warned that the West is playing with fire by testing the limits of what a nuclear power could or could not tolerate.
In September, President Vladimir Putin said that Western approval of the use of long-range missiles in Kiev would mean “the direct involvement of NATO countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine,” because NATO's military infrastructure and personnel should be adjusted. involved in aiming and firing the missiles.
Biden's decision followed months of pleas from President Volodymyr Zelensky to allow the Ukrainian military to use American weapons to hit Russian military targets far from the border.
The US decision came largely in response to Russia's deployment of North Korean ground troops to supplement its own forces, a development that has caused alarm in Washington and Kiev, sources told Reuters.
Russia calls its war in Ukraine a special military operation, while Kiev and its Western allies call it an unprovoked, imperialist land grab.
Russian forces control about a fifth of Ukrainian territory and have been advancing rapidly lately. Thousands of people died in the war, the vast majority of whom were Ukrainians.
Just weeks before the US presidential election in November, Putin ordered changes to nuclear doctrine so that any conventional attack on Russia aided by a nuclear force could be considered a joint attack on Russia.
Western analysts call the changes an escalation in Moscow's efforts to prevent the West from expanding its military aid to Ukraine. The full details of the amended doctrine have not yet been made public.
The war in Ukraine has created the worst crisis in Moscow's relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Peskov told TASS on Tuesday that Moscow is ready to normalize its ties with Washington.
“But we can't do the tango alone,” Peskov said. “And we're not going to do that.”
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Kim Coghill)
