This Is How Close Putin Came to Launching Nuclear Weapons

Russian President Vladimir Putin was feared to be so close to using nuclear weapons in Ukraine that the famously short-serving British prime minister, Liz Truss, spent the last of her 50 days in office studying weather maps and preparing for cases of radiation poisoning, according to a new book about Truss entitled Out of the Blue. The Sun reports that Truss spent “numerous hours studying satellite weather data and wind directions” over fears the “wrong weather patterns” could have a “direct fallout effect on Britain.” The concerns were triggered by U.S. intelligence analysis that there was a 50 per cent chance Putin could detonate a nuclear device. In October 2022, Joe Biden warned Russia could use nuclear weapons if “things continue down the path they are going.”