French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin, when making threats about using nuclear weapons, needs to understand that NATO, too, is a nuclear alliance.
Asked whether Putin's threat of "such consequences that you have never encountered in your history" was tantamount to threatening to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict, Le Drian said it was understood as such.
"Yes, I think that Vladimir Putin must also understand that the Atlantic alliance is a nuclear alliance. That is all I will say about this," Le Drian said on French television TF1.
(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Leslie Adler)