WASHINGTON, November 28. /TASS/. The US intelligence community believes that Washington’s permission to fire deeper into Russia with US-supplied long-range weapons will not increase the risk of a nuclear escalation, Reuters reported on Wednesday citing sources.
Over the past seven months, US intelligence services compiled a series of intelligence assessments, saying that "nuclear escalation was unlikely to result from" the outgoing administration’s decision. "That view has not changed following President Joe Biden's changed US stance this month on weapons," the report says.
"The assessments were consistent: The ATACMs weren’t going to change Russia’s nuclear calculus," the agency quoted a US Congress source as saying.
Russia's launch of its new Oreshnik ballistic missile last week has no effect on that conclusion, the report says.
The White House, the Pentagon and the Department of State have not yet replied to a TASS request for a comment.
On November 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree approving the country’s updated nuclear doctrine. The fundamental principle of the doctrine is that the use of nuclear weapons is a measure of last resort to protect the country’s sovereignty. Specifically, the document expands the range of countries and alliances subject to nuclear deterrence, as well as the list of military threats that such deterrence is designed to counter. Aggression by any non-nuclear state supported by a nuclear power will be seen as a joint attack on Russia.
On November 21, Putin said that the United States and its NATO allies had announced their approval of the use of long-range precision weapons. Following this announcement, Russian military sites in the Kursk and Bryansk regions were attacked with American and British missiles. In response, Russia used its newest intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, in a non-nuclear strike targeting Ukraine’s Yuzhmash defense plant in Dnepr (formerly known as Dnepropetrovsk).