China may have prevented Russia from using nuclear weapons against Ukraine - Blinken

Russia was really close to using nuclear weapons against Ukraine. However, China has probably prevented this catastrophic decision from happening.

This was stated by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in an interview with the Financial Times. According to Blinken, Washington was "very concerned" when intelligence provided information about the possibility of Moscow using nukes.

It is noted that Putin was seriously considering such a possibility.

"Even when the probability increases from five to 15 percent, when it comes to nuclear weapons, there is nothing more serious," the US Secretary of State said.

Blinken noted that despite the tensions between the US and China over the war in Ukraine, the nuclear issue was an exceptional case which Beijing and Washington could agree on. According to him, U.S. officials have reason to believe that the Chinese leadership has directly addressed the Kremlin to avoid escalation.

"We have reason to believe that China contacted Russia and said: 'Don't do this'," he said.

The U.S. Secretary of State also suggested that this could have happened when the United States shared information with Beijing about Russia's intentions to deploy nuclear weapons in space.

As a reminder, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War believe that the Kremlin is looking for workarounds to its neverending nuclear threats. The fact is dictator Putin's obsession with the vaunted Oreshnik missile and other Russian non-nuclear deterrents.

Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the topic of nuclear weapons has become one of the main elements of Russian propaganda. According to the Ukrainian project War of Words, since February 2022, more than 5,500 references to the possibility of using nuclear weapons have been recorded in the Russian media.

Richard Moore, head of MI6, believes that sabotage and nuclear blackmail are the main means through which the Kremlin hopes to intimidate the West into withdrawing its support for Ukraine.

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