Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a warning to the United States earlier Tuesday, lowering the threshold for a nuclear strike just days after the administration of Joe Biden reportedly allowed Ukraine to fire American missiles deep into Russia.

Russia would now consider a nuclear strike if it, or its ally Belarus, faced aggression "with the use of conventional weapons that created a critical threat to their sovereignty and (or) their territorial integrity", the new doctrine said,

This represented a change from the previous iteration which stated that Russia may use nuclear weapons in case of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatened the existence of the state.