Written by Lidia Kelly
(Reuters) – Changes have been made to Russia's nuclear doctrine and will be formalized if necessary, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, underscoring Moscow's concerns over the recent U.S. decision to fire missiles from Ukraine.
“They (the changes) have already been made properly. They will be made legally if necessary,” Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin press secretary, told TASS news agency in a statement published on Tuesday.
The Kremlin on Monday called the reported decision by President Joe Biden's administration to allow Ukraine to fire US missiles into Russia reckless and warned that Moscow would respond.
Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine 1,000 days ago, has repeatedly warned that the West is playing with fire by exploring the limits of what nuclear power can and will not tolerate.
In September, President Vladimir Putin said that Western approval of Kyiv's use of long-range missiles 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 would be involved in guiding and firing the missiles.
Biden's decision followed months of pleas from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to allow Ukrainian forces to use US weapons to strike Russian forces far from their border.
The US decision came largely because of Russia's deployment of ground troops to North Korea to support its forces, which has raised fears in Washington and Kyiv, sources told Reuters.
Russia calls its war in Ukraine a special military operation, while Kyiv and its Western allies call it an unjustified, imperialist land grab.
Russian forces control about a fifth of Ukraine's territory and have recently advanced rapidly. Thousands of people have died in the war, most of them Ukrainians.
A few weeks before November's US presidential vote, Putin ordered changes to the nuclear doctrine to say that any conventional Russian attack backed by nuclear power would be considered a coordinated attack by Russia.
Western analysts called the changes an escalation of Moscow's efforts to stop Western countries from increasing their military aid to Ukraine. The full details of this amended doctrine have not been made public.
The war in Ukraine has created the worst crisis in Moscow's relations with the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Peskov told TASS on Tuesday that Moscow is ready to normalize its relations with Washington.
“But we can't sing alone,” said Peskov. “And we won't do it.”
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Kim Coghill)
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