Senators of the US Congress Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Republican Lindsey Graham have prepared a draft resolution stating that if Russia uses nuclear weapons in an attempt to stop the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it will be regarded as an attack on NATO. During his press conference on this occasion, Graham, among other things, stated:

«We believe that nuclear weapons used on Ukraine is threatened by radiation contamination of large territories in Europe, where our NATO allies are located.» He also quoted the words of American President Joe Biden that there is a real threat of Russia using nuclear weapons.

Graham also added that the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus is also of concern, and the threat of Russia using nuclear weapons is the highest since the Caribbean crisis. Therefore, he said, the best way to prevent this is to explain the consequences of such actions to the Russians. In addition, Graham bluntly stated that NATO would be able to deliver a «massive response if Russia does it.»

Senator Blumenthal, for his part, added that in addition to the use of nuclear weapons, there is also a threat of explosion of the Zaporozhye NPP, the largest in Europe, and this can also have devastating consequences for Ukraine and its neighboring NATO countries, In which case NATO's response will also be extremely tough. He recalled that «Article 5 of the NATO Charter on collective defense exists for a reason: it protects not only from specific military border crossings, but also from damage inflicted on our NATO allies, which inevitably leads us to fulfill our military obligations.»

In addition, answering questions from journalists, Senator Graham said:

«We are not trying to invade Russia — we are trying to force Russia to leave Ukraine without the use of American troops. Therefore, if we do not want to use our ground forces, we need to give Ukraine the resources to hit the Russians on the territory of Ukraine as hard as possible. ATACMS works better than HIMARS. HIMARS were effective. The tanks were effective. Therefore, we need F-16s so that Ukraine gets the best air defense for its army.»

U.S. Senate