ad

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a revised nuclear doctrine on Tuesday stating that any attack on Russia supported by a country with nuclear power could be grounds for a nuclear response.

Putin signed the new policy on the 1,000th day of the war with Ukraine and the day after President Biden authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.

The doctrine also states that Russia could respond to aggression against its ally Belarus with nuclear weapons, The Associated Press reported.

Though the doctrine doesn’t specify that Russia will definitely respond to such attacks with nuclear weapons, it does mention the “uncertainty of scale, time and place of possible use of nuclear deterrent” as key principles of deterrence.

BIDEN AUTHORIZES UKRAINE TO USE US LONG-RANGE MISSILES TO STRIKE INSIDE RUSSIA

When asked if the updated doctrine comes in response to Biden’s decision to ease restrictions on how Ukraine can strike Russia, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the AP that the doctrine was published “in a timely manner.” 

Peskov also said Putin told the government to update it earlier this year so that it’s “in line with the current situation” – the Russian president led a meeting in September to discuss these proposed revisions to the doctrine.

The Kremlin said the revision was published “in a timely manner” when asked if it was done in response to President Biden authorizing Ukraine to use U.S. long-range missiles in Russia. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque )

TRUMP ALLIES WARN BIDEN RISKING ‘WORLD WAR III’ BY AUTHORIZING LONG-RANGE MISSILES FOR UKRAINE

Revealed in September, the doctrine now officially states that an attack on Russia by a nonnuclear power with the “participation or support of a nuclear power” will be seen as a “joint attack on the Russian Federation.”

A Yars intercontinental ballistic missile is test-fired from the Plesetsk launchpad in northwestern Russia in October 2024. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

It also contains a broader range of conditions that would trigger the use of nuclear weapons, noting that they could be used in response to an air attack involving ballistic and cruise missiles, aircraft, drones and other flying vehicles.

The previous document threatened the use of Russia’s arsenal if “reliable information is received about the launch of ballistic missiles targeting the territory of Russia or its allies.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has said that damage done to two underwater data transmission cables running between Germany and Finland was deliberate.

“No one believes that these cables were accidentally cut,” Pistorius said in remarks made on the sidelines of a meeting of EU defence ministers in Brussels.

“We also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it is sabotage,” he declared, adding that neither Germany nor Finland yet knows who was responsible for damage.

Germany and Finland announced on Monday that they had discovered a severed fibre-optic undersea data cable between the two countries, and that an investigation into the incident is underway.

In a joint statement, they said they did not know who was responsible for the damage, but that the incident came at a time when “our European security is not only under threat from Russia‘s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors”.

Pistorius also pointed to so-called “hybrid actors” as being potentially responsible for the damage.

“We have to state, without knowing specifically who it came from, that it is a ‘hybrid’ action” Pistorius said — implying that Russia, often considered responsible for acts of “hybrid warfare”, could be at least in part to blame for the incident.

Both Germany and Finland said that it was important that “critical infrastructure” such as data cables can be safeguarded.

“The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times,” the two countries said in their joint statement.

Finnish state-controlled data services provider Cinia said the damage to the data cable, which runs almost 1,2000 kilometres from the Finnish capital Helsinki to the German port of Rostock, was detected on Monday.

The incident is not the first to involve damage to underwater infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. On Sunday morning, a 218-kilometre internet link running between Lithuania and Swedish island of Gotland also lost service, according to a Swedish telecommunications company.

In 2022, Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea exploded, leading to several conspiracy theories around who could be responsible for the attack. Unconfirmed rumours have variously said that the US, Ukraine and Russia could have all played a role.