Russia says emergency hotlines with US and NATO keep rising like nuclear threats By Reuters
By Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia on Tuesday said it was holding an emergency phone call with the United States and the NATO alliance to defuse tensions as the threat of nuclear weapons rises amid the worst conflict between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
Ukraine's 2-1/2-year-old war is entering what Russian officials say is its most dangerous phase as Russian troops advance and US pressure allows Kyiv to strike deeper into Russia with Western missiles.
President Vladimir Putin said on September 12 that Western approval of such a move would mean “the direct involvement of NATO countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine”.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, who oversees relations with Europe and NATO, told the RIA news agency that Moscow sees the military alliance increasing the role of nuclear weapons in its plans.
Russia, said Grushko, is revising its nuclear doctrine to send a signal “so that our adversaries will not be tactful about our readiness to ensure the security of the Russian Federation by all available means.”
Putin is changing Russia's nuclear doctrine to give Russia a slightly lower threshold for using such weapons in response to an attack with conventional weapons.
The United States places China as its main rival and Russia as the country's biggest threat, and US President Joe Biden says that this century will be defined by the competition between democracy and independence.
The so-called hotline between Moscow and Washington was established in 1963 to reduce the misunderstandings that caused the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 by allowing direct communication between the US and Russian leaders.
The US-Russian hotline, now a secure computerized communication system, has been used during major crises such as the Six-Day War of 1967, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and after the US invasion of -Iraq. in 2003.
Besides the leaders' phone, there are also nuclear hotlines between the Pentagon and the Russian defense ministry that were created during the Cold War to reduce the risk of nuclear war.
After Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops to enter Ukraine in February 2022, an additional, so-called “de-escalation” line was established between Russian and US forces to prevent the war from escalating into a US-Russia war.
Defense Minister Andrei Belousov contacted US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in July about Ukraine's alleged plot to attack Russia. The New York Times reported that Austin took a call from Belousov on July 12 about a covert operation in Ukraine planned for Russia that Moscow believed was sanctioned by the United States.
There is also a Russia-NATO hotline, established in 2013, to reduce tensions in difficult situations.
