Could Zelensky go nuclear if Trump cuts US support?

Two years ago, as the Russian army was retreating back from northeast Ukraine, there were serious worries that Vladimir Putin would use tactical nuclear weapons to block the Ukrainian advance.

- MARK ALMOND

In September 2022, Liz Truss is reported to have spent her last days in No 10 poring over maps of potential fallout zones affecting this country.

Although Putin has rattled his nuclear sabres several times since, he’s confined himself to launching horrific sub-nuclear thermobaric bombs amid his swarms of rockets and drones striking Ukrainian cities. But the threat of the war turning nuclear has raised its head again – this time from Kyiv, rather than the Kremlin.

An influential think tank there has advised president Volodymyr Zelensky to use the fuel rods from Ukraine’s nuclear energy reactors to make either a Nagasaki-type Bomb or a “dirty bomb” to intimidate Russia into halting the war – and forestall the consequences of a Trump presidency cutting military and financial aid.

Although some observers pooh-pooh the idea that Ukraine would be the one to break the taboo on using nuclear weapons, don’t forget that a few weeks before Russia invaded, Zelensky warned the Munich Security Conference that his country might have to go nuclear if the West failed to prevent war.