Russian President Vladimir Putin’s open threat to use nuclear weapons against NATO allies supporting Ukraine appears to European officials to be a watershed in high-stakes brinkmanship that could foreshadow a new level of carnage in Ukraine.

The threat is, first, a sign of “desperation and frustration by Putin,” a European official whose country emerged from behind the Iron Curtain after the fall of the Soviet Union told the Washington Examiner. “And secondly, as psychological pressure to the West before his major escalation in Ukraine (most likely in the coming days).”