Putin's sick KGB ploy to bully Ukraine into submission laid bare as WW3 hangs in the balance

Anthony Glees, an academic in security and defence and a lecturer at the University of Buckingham, has offered the Mirror analysis into the situation around Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin's sick ploy to bully Ukraine into submission has been laid bare as fears about World War Three grow.

Anthony Glees, an expert on European affairs and security, told us he unsurprised to see Putin, 72, take the "same old" approach. The academic believes Russia would react with a "nuclear response" to any tactics the West may deploy in the coming weeks.

Speaking exclusively to the Mirror, Mr Glees, also a lecturer at the University of Buckingham, said: "In one sense, Putin is now simply putting his signature to a doctrine he himself set out before the US Elections. So the same old mixture of cold-blooded threats of violence and nuclear conflict, backed up by the appalling slaughter on the battlefield that he started and the criminal slaughter of thousands of Ukrainian citizens in the massive drone and missile attacks he's launched with the aid of Iran and North Korea. But it's also true that now Putin has codified his pseudo-legal approach (so typical of the way the KGB used to threaten and intimidate its opponents in the USSR).

"He's saying, with cold brazen cheek, not just that he would deploy nukes if Russia (or Belarus ) faced aggression from conventional force of arms if this were to 'threaten our sovereignty or territorial integrity' but that if a conventionally armed state (i.e. Ukraine) were 'supported' by a nuclear power (i.e. The USA - or the UK), this would be considered a 'joint attack' on Russia and be met by a nuclear response."

Putin has relaxed the threshold for Russia’s use of its nuclear weapons, a move that follows Joe Biden ’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russian territory with US-supplied longer-range missiles. The document, called the "Fundamentals of State Police in the Sphere of Nuclear Deterrence", says: "Nuclear weapons (NW) are an extreme measure to protect the sovereignty of the country. At the same time, due to the emergence of new military threats and risks, Russia needed to clarify the parameters that allow the use of NW."

The new doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power. While the doctrine envisions a possible nuclear response by Russia to such a conventional strike, it is formulated broadly to avoid a firm commitment to use nuclear weapons and keep Putin’s options open.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasised that the Ukrainian strike in Bryansk marked an escalation and urged the US and other Western allies to study the modernized nuclear doctrine.