Russia warns NATO ally not to underestimate nuclear war threat

Russian Ambassador to Denmark Vladimir Barbin has warned the country, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), not to underestimate the threat of nuclear war.

It has been more than two years since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. As the war rages on, Ukraine has received aid mainly from the United States and European countries. NATO has condemned Russia’s invasion and stood by Ukraine in the conflict.

Denmark has pledged to deliver 19 F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine this summer as Ukraine’s allies have been urged to consider loosening the reins on how Kyiv can use the weapons given to them.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in comments to Norwegian broadcaster TV2 on Tuesday that Kyiv is “welcome to use what we have donated to Ukraine, also outside of Ukraine—that is, on Russian targets—if it is within international law.” However, she did not clarify if this would apply to the F-16 fighter aircraft.

Barbin told Danish news agency Ritzau that Frederiksen’s “support for the idea of Ukraine using Copenhagen-supplied weapons against targets inside Russia could lead to the conflict spiraling out of control.”

“Strikes by longer-range weapons require direct technical assistance from NATO countries, something Copenhagen is well aware of. However, Denmark seems to be willing to give Kyiv carte blanche to provoke a direct clash between NATO and Russia. The consequences here will be devastating,” Russia state owned news agency TASS reported on Thursday.

Barbin commented directly on the F-16 fighter jets, warning that their delivery “would be seen as a nuclear threat.”

“Denmark should not scoff at Russia’s repeated warnings that the emergence of F-16s in Ukraine would be seen as a nuclear threat,” the ambassador said. “Russia cannot ignore the fact that these aircraft are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. This position was publicly stated by the Russian Foreign Ministry and was also conveyed to NATO countries through diplomatic channels.”

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian government via online form as well as Ukraine and Denmark’s Foreign Ministries via email for comment.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov blamed NATO countries for the raging war, claiming that they are provoking Ukraine to continue it.

“The North Atlantic Alliance’s member-countries, the United States in particular, other European capitals in recent days and weeks were coming close to a new round of escalating tensions. They are doing this on purpose,” Peskov said, according to a TASS report published on Thursday.

“We realize that this negative trend in their approach unfortunately persists. They provoke Ukraine in every possible way to continue this senseless war.”

The Russian official warned, “This, of course, will inevitably entail its consequences. It will ultimately be very harmful to the interests of those countries which have opted for the path of escalation.”

Loosening Restrictions?

At a joint press conference earlier this month with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Kyiv, Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked if President Joe Biden‘s administration was considering relaxing its ban on Ukraine using U.S. weapons in Russian territory.

“We have not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but ultimately Ukraine has to make decisions for itself about how it’s going to conduct this war, a war it’s conducting in defense of its freedom, of its sovereignty, of its territorial integrity,” Blinken said. “And we will continue to back Ukraine with the equipment that it needs to succeed, that it needs to win.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has urged member states to reconsider their restrictions on donated weapons.

“Allies are delivering many different types of military support to Ukraine and some of them have imposed some restrictions on the use of these weapons[…]These are national decisions,” Stoltenberg said in a speech in Prague, Czech Republic, on Thursday.

“But I think that in light of how this war has evolved[…]the time has come to consider some of these restrictions, to enable the Ukrainians to really to defend themselves.”