File image: Ukrainian military personnel inspect the site of a missile strike in front of a damaged residential building, amid Russia's invasion, April 30, 2022.File image: Ukrainian military personnel inspect the site of a missile strike in front of a damaged residential building, amid Russia's invasion, April 30, 2022.
The decision to use Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal, the biggest in the world, rests with the Russian president, currently Vladimir Putin. “We don’t see, as an intelligence community, practical evidence at this point of Russian planning for a deployment or even use of tactical nuclear weapons,” Burns said.A decree signed by Putin on June 2, 2020, said Russia views its nuclear weapons as “exclusively a means of deterrence”.