Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) chairs a meeting of his security council on nuclear deterrence at the Kremlin in Moscow on Wednesday at which he trailed the introduction of a slew of clarifications to the conditions under which Russia would resort to nuclear weapons. Photo by Alexander Kazakov/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool/EPA-EFE

Putin told a meeting of senior officials on Russia’s nuclear deterrence that amendments were being made to a document setting out the country’s nuclear doctrine to clarify the precise circumstances in which the use of nuclear weapons would be justified.

He said the draft changes expanded “the category of states and military alliances in relation to which nuclear deterrence is carried out” and detailed specific military threats that Russia would consider grounds to resort to nuclear weapons.

“What I would especially like to draw your attention to, is that in the updated version of the document, aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, is proposed to be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation,” Putin told the officials.

The publicizing of the shift in its nuclear deterrence policy, which Russia has always insisted is defensive in nature, was being seen as Moscow letting it be known it was now free to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, if provoked.

Putin has threatened on numerous occasions since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that Moscow would not think twice before resorting to nuclear weapons were its sovereignty placed at risk.

Russian forces conducted battlefield nuclear weapons exercises close to the border with Ukraine in May and have based so-called tactical nuclear weapons on the soil of Belarus, Ukraine’s neighbor to the north.

Previously, the doctrine limited Russia to deploying nuclear weapons only in retaliation if it or its allies were attacked with nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction or, a conventional attack that posed an existential threat to the Russian Federation.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York earlier Wednesday, Zelensky invoked fears of a different nuclear threat, as he urged all nations to get behind his three-point victory plan for a “real, just peace.”

He said Ukraine intelligence reports showed Russia was planning to attack Ukraine’s nuclear power infrastructure to disconnect it from the national power grid.

Russia was using satellite images from other countries to gather the necessary information Zelensky said, warning that a missile or drone strike or any critical incident could lead to a nuclear catastrophe.

“A day like that must never come,” he said.

He said nuclear power plants must be safe, cautioning that if Russia caused a nuclear plant catastrophe, “radiation does not respect national borders.”

Recalling the “terrifying” day in March 2022 when Russian tanks fired directly at Ukraine’s six-reactor Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, Zelensky said the incident brought home to the country “exactly what it was dealing with.”

He said that having failed to break the will of Ukraine to resist on the battlefield Putin was “looking for other ways to break the Ukrainian spirit, principally by destroying all the country’s conventional power plants and a large part of its hydroelectric capacity.

“This is how Putin is preparing for winter, hoping to torment millions of Ukrainians,” Zelensky said. “Ordinary families, women, children. Ordinary towns, ordinary villages. Putin wants to leave them in the dark this winter.”