UNITED NATIONS, September 28. /TASS/. Moscow assumes that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s public remarks about the nuclear doctrine were heard, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a news conference to sum up the results of his participation in the High-Level Week of the 79th UN General Assembly.
"When we say something publicly - particularly when the president says something publicly - we assume that it will be heard by those who are interested in our approaches. But it’s not for me to judge how they understand it," he said, when asked whether Putin’s remarks were a message to the West.
The minister added that the West’s decision regarding authorization for strategic-depth strikes on Russia with Western weapons "will show how they understood what they had heard."
Russia’s nuclear doctrine lays the groundwork for the use of nuclear weapons, defining nuclear response as an extreme measure to protect the country’s sovereignty. The current edition of the nuclear doctrine was approved in June 2020, replacing a previous similar document that remained in force for about a decade.
Recent geopolitical developments and emerging military threats and risks necessitated the review of the document, known formally as Basic Principles of State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence. During a meeting of the Russian Security Council on the issue of nuclear deterrence on September 25, Putin outlined the basic parameters of the updated document. The new version has already been drafted, but the president is yet to approve it.
The revised document has a broader list of countries and military alliances that are subject to nuclear deterrence and adds more entries in the list of military threats, whose neutralization requires nuclear deterrence. Critical threat to Russian sovereignty with conventional weapons will be sufficient for a nuclear response. Aggression against Russia by a non-nuclear country, but with the participation or support of a nuclear country, was proposed to be viewed as their joint attack on Russia.