Amid the intensifying Russia-Ukraine war, a recent report claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's outreach to Vladimir Putin averted a "potential nuclear attack" on Ukraine in 2022.
The CNN report, citing two senior officials, said that the United States had been preparing rigorously for a potential nuclear strike by Russia on Ukraine. PM Modi and other countries played an important role in averting the crisis, stated the report.
The officials said that the Biden administration was concerned whether Russia might use a tactical or battlefield nuclear weapon against its war with Ukraine.
Amid the fears, the US sought to enlist the help of non-allies including India, to discourage Russia from such an attack, said the report.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s intervention was also mentioned in the report along with Modi in averting the crisis.
"One of the things we did was not only message them directly but strongly urge, press, and encourage other countries, to whom they might be more attentive, to do the same thing," the senior administration official told CNN.
"I think we believe showing the international community the concern about this, particularly the concern from key countries for Russia and the Global South, was also a helpful, persuasive factor and showed them what the cost of all this could be. I think the fact that we know, India weighed in, China weighed in, others weighed in, may have had some effect on their thinking," the officer said.
Rather than directly criticising Russia, PM Modi had told Putin that this is not the era of war.
The CNN report also said that Russia circulated a "false flag story" about a Ukrainian dirty bomb, which the US feared could be intended as a cover for a Russian nuclear attack.
"We obviously placed a high priority on tracking and had some ability at least to track such movements of its nuclear forces," a senior administration official said.
“And at no point did we ever see any indications of the types of steps that we would've expected them to take if they were going down a path toward using nuclear weapons,” he added.
(With ANI inputs)
