LONDON, (Reuters) – When asked if Russia will rule out a tactical nuclear strike against Ukraine, Russia’s deputy foreign minister stated on Tuesday that a decision regarding the use of nuclear weapons had been clearly laid out in Russia’s military doctrine.

Alexander Grushko, a state news agency RIA quoted him as saying: “We have a Military Doctrine – Everything is written there.”

Russia’s military deployment guidelines allow the use nuclear weapons in cases where they or other weapons of mass destruction are being used against the country or when the Russian state is under existential danger from conventional weapons.

Vladimir Putin is currently the Russian president. He has made the decision to make use of Russia’s huge nuclear arsenal.

Russia’s incursion has resulted in the deaths of thousands, displacement of nearly 10,000,000 people and fears for a larger confrontation with the United States, which is the most powerful nuclear country on earth.

William Burns, Director of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency said Saturday that Putin feels he can’t afford to lose Ukraine. He also warned that Russia could use tactical nuclear weapons against the West.

Burns claimed that “we don’t have any evidence, as intelligence communities, of Russian preparations for the deployment, or even use, of tactical nuclear arms,”

But he warned that Putin’s Russia is in serious trouble.

NUCLEAR STRIKE

Putin signed a decree on June 2, 2020 stating that Russia considers its nuclear weapons “exclusively a deterrence tool”.

This repeats the phrases of the military doctrine, but includes information about the four conditions under which a nuke strike could be ordered. This includes reliable information on a Russian missile attack and an enemy attacking “critical state or military facilities of Russia Federation”, whose failure would cause a disruption to a nuclear response.

Putin has expressed his dissatisfaction over how the West has treated Russia since 1991’s fall of Soviet Union. He claims that the United States has used Ukraine to menace Russia.

His Feb. 24, order to conduct a special military operations was justified by the fact that the Ukrainian government had been persecuting Russian speakers, and that the United States wanted to expand NATO’s military alliance in ways that could endanger Russia.

U.S. President Joe Biden views Putin’s invasion in Ukraine as part of a larger global struggle between democracy and dictatorship. Biden has called Putin a war crime and said that the ex-KGB spy can no longer be in power.

Russian accusations that Ukraine has persecuted Russian speakers are dismissed by Ukraine, which says it fights for its survival. Russia rejects Western claims that its troops committed war crimes against Ukraine and other Western countries.