Ukrainian officials have called on world leaders to issue a firm warning to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, making it clear that any attempt to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine would result in catastrophic consequences for Russia.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in an interview at the presidential administration in Kyiv:

The other nuclear states need to say very firmly that as soon as Russia even thinks of carrying out nuclear strikes on foreign territory – in this case the territory of Ukraine – there will be swift retaliatory nuclear strikes to destroy the nuclear launch sites in Russia.

On Wednesday, Russian television aired an address by Putin in which he demonstratively played the nuclear card. The Russian president also announced “referendums” in four partially occupied regions of Ukraine, on the question of the territories joining Russia, and declared partial mobilisation.

Since February, Putin has made nuclear threats several times, but Wednesday’s was the most clear and explicit to date, and has left analysts scrambling to determine whether the possibility Putin could resort to nukes is real or just a bluff.

“I think the analytical capacity of Putin’s circle is very low at the moment – they don’t understand all the risks of what they are doing and where it has already brought the Russian Federation,” said Podolyak. “It’s hard to make predictions when a person is completely irrational.”

Read the full story by Shaun Walker and Luke Harding:

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