BBC Today host Mishal Husain said: “I wanted to ask you about… You’re someone with a military background yourself, about President Putin’s nuclear threat because there always had been the assumption that these weapons would never be used it would lead to mutually assured destruction.
“Yet he has a sizable stockpile, doesn’t he? Of battlefield nuclear weapons.”
Mr Tugendhat said: “That’s true, and the Russian military doctrine doesn’t work in the same way as the NATO military doctrine.
“They do assume that they may use the whole field nuclear weapons and they see them as just a, excuse the expression, a bigger bang.
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Mr Tugendhat added: “They don’t treat fallout in the same way as we do.
“And so the assumptions are not quite the same. That said, Russia has frequently threatened nuclear deployments in the past.
“In fact, I think most recently I’m probably going to get the date wrong but I think it was in 2016 against Denmark.
“So this is not unusual but at the same time it is concerning and it is not impossible that a Russian military order to use the whole field nuclear weapons could be given.”
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“Senior officials of the leading NATO countries also allow aggressive statements against our country, therefore I order the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff [of the Russian Armed Forces] to transfer the deterrence forces of the Russian army to a special mode of combat duty.”
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has reacted to Putin’s threats saying: “I fear this conflict could be very, very bloody.
“I urge the Russians not to escalate this conflict but we do need to be prepared for Russia to seek to use even worse weapons. I think it would be hugely devastating.
“We need to avoid this at all costs. This is why it is so important, the work we are doing to degrade the Russian military complex.”
And speaking to the BBC, Tory MP Tobias Ellwood said: “We’ve seen what he’s done in Syria for example, he can certainly use other weapons systems which haven’t been tested or that we’re used to.”
Mr Ellwood added: “Chemical weapons and the worst-case scenario would be low yield nuclear weapons as well.”
