(RightIsRight.co) – Former US National Security Adviser John Bolton has warned that the United States could go ahead and assassinate Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin if the latter made good on his threats to use nuclear weapons in his invasion of Ukraine.
Bolton, who served as former President Donald Trump’s top national security official from 2018-2019, spoke after earlier this week Moscow attacked cities all over Ukraine with missiles and Iranian drones in retaliation for a truck bomb blast on Putin’s favorite Russia-Crimea bridge.
The Russian bombardment killed dozens and wounded hundreds of Ukrainian civilians, feeding speculations that Putin could act on his threats to strike Ukraine with nukes.
However, according to John Bolton, the United States should make it clear to the Kremlin that if he did that, Putin “would be signing a suicide note.”
“We need to make clear if Putin were to order the use of a tactical nuclear weapon, he would be signing a suicide note. I think that’s what it may take to deter him if he gets into extreme circumstances,” Bolton told UK-based radio station LBC News, as cited by Newsmax.
“You can ask Qassem Soleimani in Iran what happens when we decide somebody is a threat to the US,” Bolton added.
He was referring to the top-ranking Iranian military commander who was obliterated by the United States in a drone strike in Iraq’s capital Baghdad in early January 2020 on the order of then-US President Donald Trump.
“I think one thing that’s important before we get to that stage is to increase our efforts to deter him from thinking about it. Putin has bluffed about the use of nuclear weapons before every indication so far is that the current talk is also a bluff,” Bolton said.
“But I don’t rule out the possibility of nuclear weapons if Russian forces in Ukraine collapsed, or if Putin found himself in really dire straits, politically inside Russia,” the former Trump official elaborated.
He urged the US government to “make it clear” to all officials in Putin’s government that they could “take action” to prevent the worst-case scenarios.
Bolton emphasized that the US “cannot allow” anyone to use nuclear weapons, whether in Ukraine or elsewhere, without those responsible being held to account.
He mentioned among the wannabe nuclear weapon users “terrorists like Iran or North Korea, as well as from Russia or China.”
“There are a lot of proposals for the destruction of Russian forces inside Ukraine, the Black Sea Fleet, and the like, if Russia were to use a nuclear weapon, I don’t have any objection to that… And I think by making it clear, we will levy responsibility on the person who makes that order. That increases the chance of deterring that person from doing it in the first place,” Bolton elaborated.
John Bolton said in a recent interview that the United States must make it "clear" to Russian President Vladimir Putin that using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine "would be signing a suicide note." https://t.co/skDLEAAlLz
— Newsmax (@newsmax) October 11, 2022
