Ukraine war: Very low chance Russia will use nuclear weapons - expert
Russia's president Vladimir Putin has repeatedly hinted at the use of nuclear weapons.
Amid a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive, he said Moscow would "defend [its] land with all the forces and resources" it has.
It comes as his US counterpart Joe Biden said the threats were the most serious since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Euronews spoke to Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation who used to work at Russia's foreign ministry, to get his views on the chances of nuclear weapons being used in the Ukraine war.
Here is a selection of his answers.
"If you mean using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, then the probability is very, very low. Of course, these days, anything can happen," said Sokov.
"So far, all nuclear signalling that has been done by Vladimir Putin and his associates since the beginning of the war has been directed at the West, at NATO, but not at Ukraine."
"He doesn't have to deploy much. Plenty of weapons are already deployed or can be used from quite deep within Russia.
"The main risk is that the war in Ukraine escalates and directly involves NATO. I don't expect a surprise attack by Russia using nuclear weapons against NATO.
"It will be a process. There will be more warnings, or there will be possibly the use of conventional weapons, but later it will come to nuclear weapons.
"The more likely scenario is the nuclear tests, but not in the Black Sea. The nuclear tests will be at the regular nuclear test site on Novaya Zemlya, or very much in the north of Russia, in the Arctic."
"Any use of nuclear weapons, no matter how powerful, is a major step. A very limited or just a handful of low-yield nuclear weapons will not change the situation at the front lines.
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