Russia’s claim that it used a hypersonic missile in Ukraine Saturday served as a signal to the world that it would go as far as to use a nuclear weapon, Washington Examiner Editor-in-Chief Hugo Gurdon said this weekend.
Gurdon made the comment after being asked for his analysis on Moscow’s alarming allegation that it deployed a nuclear-capable projectile in a Saturday Fox News appearance. The claim itself has not been confirmed, Gurdon noted, though it still served as a warning to the international community that Russia could use a nuclear weapon in this conflict. Even the suggestion of the use of a nuclear weapon is significant, he explained.
RUSSIAN MILITARY CLAIMS IT DEPLOYED ‘HYPERSONIC AEROBALLISTIC MISSILES’
“Russians want the West to believe that it will go to whatever extreme it can” to win this war, Gurdon told anchor Jon Scott, adding that it was “part of a long standing Russian and previously Soviet strategy that they would use the ultimate weapon — nuclear weapons, for example, tactical nuclear weapons in the battlefield.”
The Kremlin was acting as it had “to show the West that Putin is going to raise the cost of resisting his aggression in Ukraine, as high as it takes,” he continued, “He’s not interested in some of the limits that saner people and people in the West — more humane people — would put on this kind of conflict. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his aims, or at least that’s the signal that he’s trying to send.”
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Asked what the U.S. could do, Gurdon replied that a policy change would be required from the Biden administration, saying, “The United States can adjust, for example, and allow the Soviet-era MiGs to go from Poland to Ukraine.”
“Clearly, the Biden administration failed to prevent this war, and I think that it has to, it has to arm the Ukrainians.”
Earlier Saturday, Russia claimed to have used a hypersonic missile to strike an ammunition warehouse in western Ukraine. Hypersonic missiles reach at least 10 times the speed of sound, and such missiles often are more maneuverable and fly closer to the surface, making it much harder to defend from an incoming attack.
