Three days after starting the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the country’s nuclear forces to go on combat alert due to criticisms made by NATO (Western military alliance) countries of the war. In practice, this means that the bureaucratic paths between the order to launch a nuclear warhead and the military at the end are shortened.
The gesture ignited a worldwide alert for fears of a new nuclear escalation – even though all the countries holding the bomb in the United Nations Security Council signed a document pledging not to start an atomic conflict. On Wednesday (2), US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview that “nobody wins a nuclear war, everyone loses”.
Russia and the USA concentrate 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads, a legacy of the first Cold War, more than enough to put an end to humanity. So far, Americans and allies have insisted that they will not cross Ukrainian borders, precisely to avoid a confrontation with the Russians.
Compare, below, the size of the nuclear arsenal of Russia, the USA and other countries.
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