Associated Press
Months into Russia's war in Ukraine, the United States had intelligence pointing to “highly sensitive, credible conversations inside the Kremlin” that President Vladimir Putin was seriously considering using nuclear weapons to avoid major battlefield losses, journalist Bob Woodward reported in his new book, “War.” The U.S. intelligence pointed to a 50% chance that Putin would use tactical nukes if Ukrainian forces surrounded 30,000 Russian troops in the southern city of Kherson, the book says. Just months before, in the far northeast, Ukrainian troops had stunned the Russians by recapturing Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, and were pivoting to liberate Kherson, strategically located on the Dnieper River not far from the Black Sea.