U.S. officials believe that the likelihood Russian President Vladimir Putin will use a tactical nuclear weapon in his struggling war in Ukraine is perhaps the highest it has been since Russia invaded in February — but is still not probable, multiple officials familiar with the latest intelligence tell CNN.
The intelligence community is closely watching for any signs that Putin's calculus has changed after the Russian president was widely perceived last week to be escalating his past threats to use nuclear weapons.
Several U.S. defense officials, who also said they see no indication at this time of Russia moving nuclear weapons around, said they believe it's likely the U.S. could detect movement even of smaller tactical warheads.if there was a threat to his own position, or if he perceived an existential threat to Russia itself -- which he may consider a loss in Ukraine to be.
For example, some officials are concerned that Putin could take extreme steps to protect Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine, amid sham referendums held there that are expected to result in Russia forcibly annexing the territory. Putin also said last week that Russia's threats to deploy a nuclear weapon are "not a bluff."
"Tactical," or "battlefield" warheads — also known as "low yield" warheads — are designed for use in a battlefield setting. They have explosive yields of 10 to 100 kilotons of dynamite. But they can still be unimaginably deadly: the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945 were the equivalent of about 15 to 21 kilotons, respectively.
How the U.S. responds would depend on which of those options Putin chose, President Joe Biden said in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" earlier this month.
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