No 'practical evidence' Russia plans to use tactical nuclear weapons: CIA

The United States' spy agency says there are no indications showing that Russia could be preparing to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s Director Bill Burns made the remarks to a conference hosted by The Financial Times on Saturday amid a fanfare in the Western media outlets about the alleged possibility.

"We don't see, as an intelligence community, practical evidence at this point of Russian planning for the deployment or even potential use of tactical nuclear weapons," Burns said.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” aimed at “demilitarization” of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine. In 2014, the two regions declared themselves new republics, refusing to recognize Ukraine’s Western-backed government.

Announcing the operation, Putin said the mission was aimed at “defending people who for eight years were suffering persecution and genocide by the Kiev regime.”

Speaking on Friday, a senior Russian official said Moscow did not intend to deploy nuclear weapons in the ex-Soviet republic, describing Western media reports to the contrary as “deliberate lies.”

“The scenarios of our potential use of nuclear weapons are clearly prescribed in Russian doctrinal documents. They are not applicable to the implementation of the tasks set in the course of the special military operation in Ukraine,” said Alexey Zaitsev, the Russian Foreign Ministry Deputy Spokesman.

“Russia firmly adheres to the principle that there can be no winners in a nuclear war, and it must not be unleashed,” he added.

The CIA director, however, alleged that the United States could not ignore the possibility of deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Ukraine either, citing "the kind of saber-rattling that ... we've heard from the Russian leadership."

"So we stay very sharply focused as an intelligence service ... on those possibilities at a moment when the stakes are very high for Russia," he said.

ME