Medvedev portrays nuclear strike remark of EU's Borrell as "paranoia"

Recent remarks made by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell indicate that the Western countries are not ready to offer all-out support for Ukraine, taking the world to the brink of a nuclear apocalypse, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said.

Claims about the possibility of Russia’s nuclear strike on Ukraine, made by Borrell, are nothing but ‘paranoia,’ the Russian official wrote on his VKontakte page on October 13, according to TASS.

"Let’s leave the paranoia about the Russian nuclear strike on his conscience," Medvedev said, commenting on Borrell’s remark that the West would give a powerful, but the non-nuclear military response in case of a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine.

"By the way, I wrote recently that the Western states don’t care a lot about Ukraine and its Bandera regime. They don’t want to offer them all-out support. Moreover, overseas and European rabble-rousers are definitely not going to die for them in a nuclear apocalypse. That is why their response will be careful and balanced. And this is the second meaning of Borrell’s remark," Medvedev added.

In his speech at the European Diplomatic Academy in Bruges, Borrel said that "any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer" from the United States, the European Union and NATO. "Not a nuclear answer, but such a powerful answer from the military side that the Russian army would be annihilated," he added.

Exercises by Western leaders in nuclear rhetoric are detrimental and inflammatory, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters earlier this week. "We consider this a very harmful practice and a provocative practice," he said. "Russia does not want to take part in these exercises and does not participate in them."

Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Alexander Venediktov said in an interview with TASS on October 13 that, unlike their Western counterparts, Russian officials have never made public threats of using nuclear weapons or any other weapon of mass destruction.

According to the Russian nuclear doctrine, the use of nuclear weapons by Russia is possible only if the enemy uses this or other types of weapons of mass destruction against the Russian Federation and its allies and if there is reliable information about the launch of ballistic missiles to attack Russia and its allies if the enemy influences the objects necessary for retaliatory actions of nuclear forces, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.