Joseph Cirincione , a distinguished fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Public Administration in Washington and ex-director of nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment, named five options for Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons to strike the world.

The Sun writes about it.

Sirincione believes that the West reduced the threat of a nuclear attack. He warned that the Russian dictator could first launch nuclear weapons into the Black Sea as a “demonstration shot” and then use them on targets in Ukraine.

In the worst-case scenario, Cirincione said, Putin could fire on NATO targets or even the United States.

The first option is that he uses a nuclear weapon during a demonstration shot to release something into the Black Sea, for example. The goal is escalation to de-escalate if the war goes badly. If the Russians felt that they were on the verge of defeat, they would have fired a nuke to show the gravity of the situation and force the West to back down. If this happened, I would say that the reaction would be shock and horror, but it would not require a military response,” said Sirincione.

At the same time, in his opinion, the US response in such a situation would be “more diplomatic.”

According to the second scenario , according to the expert’s forecasts, Putin could release “weapons of very low power” at a military target in Ukraine, killing thousands of people and causing serious damage.

“Again, the US will not demand a military solution,” he said.

The third option is that the Russian Federation could use a serious nuclear weapon – the size of Hiroshima or larger – and strike and destroy cities in Ukraine.

But Cirincione insists that NATO will not launch nuclear weapons against Russia in response to this scenario.

“Now we move on to the fourth scenario …targeting a NATO base. If you saw a low-yield weapon used against a NATO target, then you would have a NATO air and ground assault that would simply wipe out the Russian military in Ukraine. We could to do it, it would take a couple of weeks ,” the American speaker added.

The fifth option is if Putin uses a nuclear weapon on a US target and uses a long-range missile to bombard the US. But, in this case, the United States can strike back.

“It is certain that the US military command will be almost universal in requiring us to retaliate with a nuclear strike. There would probably be several strikes before they can retaliate, including knocking out Putin himself,” he added.

Senior U.S. officials will work out scenarios and possible responses if the war escalates, he said .

“We must publicly discuss the options so that the Western public is fully aware of the risks and can express their opinion in the answers,” the expert summed up.

We will remind, Zelensky believes that Russia can use nuclear weapons .

As reported, US officials are more concerned about the threat of Russia’s use of nuclear weapons than at any time since the Cold War.