“Any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer- not a nuclear answer, but such a powerful answer from the military side- that the Russian army will be annihilated. There is the nuclear threat, and Vladimir Putin is saying he is not bluffing. He cannot afford bluffing”, Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said at a European Diplomatic Academy event in Brussels. “It has to be clear that the people supporting Ukraine and the European Union and the member states, and NATO and the United States are not bluffing either”, Reuters reports.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that a possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine would have serious consequences. Russia said its forces would help evacuate residents of occupied Kherson to other areas. Marat Khusnullin a Russian Deputy Prime Minister, said that residents would be helped to move away from the region in South Ukraine. Formally, this is being done at the request of the Kremlin-installed governor of Ukraine’s Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo.

According to Ukrainian military experts, the evacuation confirms intelligence data that the Russian troops in the Kherson are preparing for heavy urban warfare, UNIAN reported.