The warning followed claims from Austrian leader Karl Nehammer that Putin believes he is winning the war in Ukraine.
Chancellor Nehammer, who met the despot in Moscow last week, said he thinks the Russian president believes the war is necessary for his country’s security.
“I think he is now in his own war logic,” Nehammer said in an interview with NBC. “I think he believes he is winning the war.”
President Zelensky issued his nuclear warning in an interview with national media which he shared via Telegram. He said: “We shouldn’t wait for when Russia decides to use nuclear weapons. We must prepare for that.”
He added that Russia “can use any weapon, I’m convinced of it”.
Military strategists are also worried by the Kremlin making continued reference to the possibility of using nuclear weapons.
Prof John R Bryson, at Birmingham Business School, said: “Dmitry Peskov, President Putin’s press secretary, keeps repeating the mantra that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons against what Moscow would define as an ‘existential threat’.
“The problem for the Russian people is that it is much easier to deploy nuclear weapons against some perceived existential threat to the Russian nation, but impossible to develop a rapid and effective solution to Russia’s greatest existential threat – Vladimir Putin.”
Nina Khrushcheva, a US-based professor of international affairs and the great-granddaughter of ex-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, agreed.
She said: “This war is really the one Putin plans to win – at any cost. If he needs to declare victory and he may need to use tactical nuclear weapons – I’m not predicting that – but that could be one of the options the Russians may be prepared to use.
“Because some of the people in the government already vented this idea as a possibility.”
She added: “The popularity of Putin is increasing because Russians have no other place to turn to, other than stay in Russia.”
Ms Khrushcheva said some 300,000 academics had fled Russia in a “giant brain drain”.
Russians who remained are compromised, she said. “Their fortunes are with the Kremlin and so for them they feel Putin needs to win because otherwise all of this is going to be in vain, even for their self-esteem. So, at this point, many support the operation.” Tactical nuclear weapons are less powerful than the long-range missiles of the Cold War era when Khrushchev led the Soviet Union in the ’60s.
Ms Khrushcheva said her great-grandfather would have found the onslaught “despicable”.
Fighting continued on the ground in Ukraine yesterday with further Russian airstrikes on the capital Kyiv and in the eastern Donbas region. Meanwhile, military aid from the US has started arriving, says theWhite House.
President Joe Biden approved an extra £600million of artillery aid last week, bringing the US’s total package to £2.3billion.
He said the support would include new weapons tailored to combat Russia’s expected “wider assault” in the east. Meanwhile, Brussels is poised to target
Russian financial institutions – including state-owned Sberbank – which make up more than a third of its banking sector.
The EU had spared Russia’s largest bank from sanctions because, with Gazprombank, it is one of the main channels for payments for Russian oil and gas.
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