Kremlin says Russia-US hotline to clear crisis not in use

By Lydia Kelly

(Reuters) – A special hotline in place to defuse crises between the Kremlin and the White House is not currently being used, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, as nuclear risks rise amid the highest tensions between Russia and the West in decades.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a wider range of conventional strikes, days after reports said Washington had allowed Ukraine to use US-made weapons to strike deep into Russia.

Ukraine used US ATACMS missiles to attack Russian territory on Tuesday, taking advantage of the newly granted authorization by outgoing US President Joe Biden’s administration of the war’s 1,000. day.

A so-called hotline between Moscow and Washington was established in 1963 to reduce the misunderstandings that sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 by allowing direct communication between the American and Russian leaders.

“We have a particularly secure line for communication between the two presidents, Russia and the United States. Moreover, even for video communication,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told RIA. But when asked if this channel is currently in use, he said, “No.”

Moscow said the use of ATACMS, the longest-range missiles Washington has so far supplied to Ukraine, was a clear signal that the West wanted to escalate the conflict.

The war, which Russia started with a full-scale invasion in February 2022, has turned hundreds of Ukrainian towns and villages into dust, displaced millions of people and killed thousands of civilians, the vast majority of them Ukrainians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had long pleaded with Washington and its NATO allies to allow the use of long-range weapons, saying they are needed to destroy military and transport infrastructure key to Russia’s war effort.

Moscow has said such weapons cannot be launched without direct US operational support and that their use would make Washington a direct combatant in the war, prompting Russian retaliation.

Russian diplomats say the crisis between Moscow and Washington can now be compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the two Cold War superpowers came closest to deliberate nuclear war, and that the West is making a mistake if it thinks Russia will back Ukraine.

The Kremlin said Russia viewed nuclear weapons as a deterrent and that its updated nuclear doctrine was intended to make it clear to potential enemies that retaliation is inevitable if they attack Russia.

On Wednesday, Peskov told RIA that the West was trying to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia by allowing Kiev to strike deep into Russia with the American-made weapons.

“And of course they use Ukraine as a tool in their hands to achieve these goals,” Peskov said.

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Tom Hogue and Lincoln Feast.)