Russia’s ex-foreign minister believes Ukraine war won't involve nuclear weapons

Andrei Kozyrev also claims President Putin regarded US President Biden as 'inept' and believed the West would not respond strongly

Russian President Vladimir Putin miscalculated how the West would respond to his invasion of Ukraine, a former top Russian diplomat has said. AP

From a Florida exile a former Russian foreign minister has offered an analysis of the driving factors behind President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and why he believes the Russian leader is not likely to resort to using nuclear weapons.

Andrei Kozyrev, who served as Russia’s foreign affairs minister in Boris Yeltsin’s government in the 1990s, said while Mr Putin’s decision to start a war is “horrific” it is not irrational.

In a flurry of tweets, he argued there were three main motivations behind Mr Putin’s order for troops to enter the neighbouring country — the condition of Ukraine, the state of the Russian military and the West’s geopolitical status.

Mr Putin strongly wanted the former Soviet nation to be pro-Kremlin, and when it was leaning more towards the West he decided to use force to try to turn it around, Mr Kozyrev said.

He also claimed Mr Putin had for years been lied to by his military advisers who claimed money was being pumped into defence but it was instead being squandered on mega-yachts.

And on the West, he argued that Mr Putin believed any consequences would be weak and ineffective, pointing to the EU’s “toothless” sanctions after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The Kremlin’s view of US President Joe Biden would have been that he was “inept”, Mr Kozyrev said — a belief that was strengthened after the US’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer.

After taking those points into account, the former politician said Mr Putin’s decision to send his troops into the former Soviet nation “doesn’t make him insane” but “rational”.

“Given that he is rational, I strongly believe he will not intentionally use nuclear weapons against the West,” he added.

Mr Kozyrev said Mr Putin had massively miscalculated his move into Ukraine and how the West would respond. However, he said this does not mean he is insane but “simply wrong and immoral”.

A Russian attack on a Ukrainian nuclear power plant last week prompted an international outcry.

The invading troops shelled the station — the biggest nuclear plant in Europe — in the city of Zaporizhzhia in the early hours of Friday morning with the attack continuing even as emergency services tried to put out the resulting fire.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack could have led to a disaster equal to “six Chernobyls”.

After the shelling, Russian forces moved in and took control of the plant.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the attack did not cause the release of radioactive material but expressed “grave concern” over the situation.