Ex-US national security adviser says threat of Russia using nukes ‘closer’ than before

Former US President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton on Tuesday warned that nuclear war with Russia is “a lot closer” than it previously was as tensions with the United States escalated to an all-time high over the ongoing military intervention in Ukraine. Speaking on WABC radio, Trump's foreign policy chief was asked whether the US has edged closer to a war with Russia and if Russia's President Vladimir Putin might use nuclear weapons.

“Where we are now after this Ukraine success in the north is not that point,” Bolton said. “But it is a lot closer to it than we’ve been before.”

Then-President Donald Trump’s national security adviser between 2018 and 2019 stressed that he “always” thought that Putin would avoid the use of nuclear weapons unless in tough circumstances such as if the Ukrainians breach the Russian border and launch an assault. “The potential risk of the use of a nuclear weapon is not so much to change the battlefield but to strengthen Putin’s position at home,” he categorically asserted.

 Putin’s position might be 'endangered'

As Ukrainians launched fierce counteroffensives, reclaiming several of the captured territories and prompting Russian forces to flee, Bolton underscored that Putin’s position might be “endangered” and that he’s in “more trouble now than he’s been when he launched the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. “We need to think about how to take advantage of that,” Bolton added. 

The former United Nations ambassador under the then president George W Bush administration further said that there was no possibility that Russia would accept defeat or would surrender. “That would be a signal of weakness,” he said. “This defeat is significant enough that it will have political effects.” Bolton also refused to have a stance about Ukrainian assaults, but said that “just when you think the Russian military can’t perform any worse, they surprise you and perform worse." Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week said that Ukraine's military had retaken 6,000 square kilometres of land from Russia.

“From the beginning of September until today, our warriors have already liberated more than 6,000 square kilometres of the territory of Ukraine – in the east and south,” Zelesnkyy noted. “The movement of our troops continues.”