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BERLIN—The risk of Russian President Vladimir President Putin using nuclear weapons as part of his war in Ukraine has decreased in response to international pressure, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.
The war was continuing with “undiminished brutality” though, for now, one thing had changed, Scholz told Funke media in an interview published on Thursday to mark his first year in office.
“Russia has stopped threatening to use nuclear weapons. As a reaction to the international community marking a red line.”
Despite deep divisions, it was important that dialogue with the Kremlin continued, Germany’s leader added.
Putin said on Wednesday that the risk of a nuclear war was rising but insisted Russia had not “gone mad” and that it saw its own nuclear arsenal as a purely defensive deterrent....