LONDON, October 12. /TASS/. There can be no guarantees that the Western military would detect the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in time, said Jeremy Fleming, the director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
"I would like to think that with our allies that we would have a good chance of spotting it but of course there is never any guarantees in this space," he said.
"My view is for the moment that Russian doctrine and President Putin's approach to this, we would see that hopefully in a long way of but I think we all need to be concerned about the rhetoric," Fleming added.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on October 6 that Washington and other Western capitals may be interested in escalating the situation around the use of nuclear weapons in order to subsequently blame Moscow. According to the diplomat, that’s part of Washington's destructive policy to ensure global dominance, without regard to the danger of provoking a direct armed clash of the largest nuclear powers, which is fraught with catastrophic consequences.
Pursuant to Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine (the Fundamentals of Russia’s 2020 State Nuclear Containment Policy), Russia may use nuclear weapons in the event that the enemy employs these or other weapons of mass destruction against it or its allies or there comes reliable information about the launch of ballistic missiles for an attack on Russia and its allies, or the enemy impacts facilities required for retaliatory moves by nuclear forces and also in case of aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons, if the state’s very existence is threatened.