Daily Mail News
By DAVID AVERRE and REUTERS
PUBLISHED: 04:19 EST, 23 January 2024 | UPDATED: 04:24 EST, 23 January 2024
Russia’s willingness to deploy nuclear weapons in a potential conflict with NATO is growing because the Kremlin believes the US and its allies would not dare to respond, a think tank warned yesterday.
‘Knowing that the West is casualty- and risk-averse, Russia may seek to use enough non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNW) to inflict damage preventing its own defeat,’ the report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) read.
‘[Russia knows] the US would be unwilling to cross the nuclear threshold in retaliation, and may terminate the conflict early.
‘The Russian perception of the lack of credible Western will to use nuclear weapons or to accept casualties in conflict further reinforces Russia’s aggressive NSNW thought and doctrine,’ it concluded.