“The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war could trigger a nuclear war,” Medvedev, Russia’s former president from 2008 to 2012 who now serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council, said via Telegram.

“Nuclear states have never lost a major conflict on which their fate depends,” added Medvedev, who in recent months has often published anti-Western contributions to the conflict in Ukraine on social networks, where he has repeatedly warned that Russia has weapons nuclear. .

Representatives of NATO and Ukraine’s other allies, who will meet on Friday at the Ramstein air base in Germany to discuss further military support for Ukraine, should think about the risks of their actions, according to Medvedev.

Russia and the United States are by far the largest nuclear powers, possessing about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads. The final decision regarding Russia’s use of nuclear weapons rests with President Vladimir Putin.

Russia has repeatedly used covert or overt threats of nuclear weapons. They tried to dissuade the West from helping Ukraine, where Russia invaded, but the country did not develop according to the Kremlin’s ideas.

When asked whether Medvedev’s remarks meant that Russia was escalating the crisis to a new level, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied: “No, of course not.” According to him, Medvedev’s statements are fully consistent with Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which allows for a nuclear strike in response to “aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the state’s existence is threatened.”

Putin described Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine as an existential struggle against an aggressive and arrogant West. He has stated in the past that Russia will use all means at its disposal to defend itself and its people from any attacker.

At the same time, it was the Russians who acted as aggressors – they tried to take over Ukrainian territory and terrorized the Ukrainian civilian population.