MOSCOW (AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow would not be the first to deploy nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.

"We have not gone crazy, we are aware of what nuclear weapons are," Putin said Wednesday at a meeting of his human rights council.
"We are not going to brandish them like a razor while running around the world."

But he acknowledged the growing tensions, saying "such a threat is rising. Why make a secret out of it here?"

He added, however, that Russia would use a nuclear weapon only in response to an enemy strike.

"When we are struck, we strike back," Putin said, stressing that Moscow's strategy was based on a "so-called retaliatory strike" policy.

"But if we aren't the first to use it under any circumstances, then we will not be the second to use them either, because the possibilities of using them in the event of a nuclear strike against our territory are very limited," he said.

His comments drew an immediate rebuke from the United States.

"We think any loose talk of nuclear weapons is absolutely irresponsible," US State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters.

"It is dangerous, and it goes against the spirit of that statement that has been at the core of the nuclear non-proliferation regime since the Cold War," he said.

Meanwhile, intense shelling continued along the front in eastern Ukraine, with President Volodymyr Zelensky announcing that strikes in Donetsk region's Kurakhove killed 10 civilians on Wednesday.

"The Russian army carried out a very brutal, absolutely deliberate strike at Kurakhove, precisely at civilians," the president — who was named Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" earlier in the day — said during his nightly address.

The shelling in Kurakhove comes a day after Ukrainian artillery strikes killed six people in the Donetsk region's capital city of the same name, according to the Moscow-installed mayor.