The outgoing Biden administration recently reversed a ban on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles to strike targets inside Russia. The ban had been imposed by the White House and observed by Washington’s allies out of fear that Russia could escalate the conflict to involve nuclear weapons.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, responded by signing into law changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. Russia then struck Ukraine with an apparently new, nuclear-capable intermediate-range missile, the Oreshnik. Putin then announced that Russia had the right to attack the military installations of states allowing Ukraine to use their weapons to attack Russia – in other words, the US and UK.
Putin’s nuclear threats and the use of the Oreshnik missile were reported with alarm around the world. In the UK, news media asked if Putin was “ready to reach for the nuclear button” and invoked the possibility of world war three.
UK and US stories that amplified Putin’s threats were covered in detail in gloating Russian media reports. Reporting a story in the Guardian that suggested Putin was directly threatening London and Washington, the host of the 60 Minutes programme on the Russia 1 television channel commented that........