Journalist Vitaly Portnikov spoke about this on Espreso TV."I have never believed that Putin's use of tactical nuclear weapons is impossible. But in order to use it, there must be real prerequisites. The first factor is the defeat of the Russian armed forces, which would lead to the actual cancellation of Putin's plans for Ukraine for a long period of time. There are no such preconditions now. The Russian army is advancing on Ukraine, destroying Ukrainian infrastructure without gaining any strategic successes, but it has no strategic defeats either. Frankly speaking, these strategic defeats are not foreseen in the near future, although strategic successes are not foreseen either," Vitaly Portnikov said.In his opinion, when countries are at a stalemate in a war (and the Russian-Ukrainian war is exactly the kind of stalemate that can last for many years and move from the 2020s to the 2030s), it is unlikely that nuclear weapons can be used."The second factor is the world's reaction to the use of nuclear weapons. This is a completely new scheme - a strike by a nuclear country against a country that does not have nuclear weapons. We are not talking about a conflict between nuclear countries or a nuclear country and a nuclear bloc, as in the case of the conflict between Russia and NATO. This is a strike by a nuclear country against a non-nuclear country, which is actually a risk-free moment for a nuclear country, so to speak, a pedagogy for a non-nuclear country, because a nuclear country itself does not risk a nuclear strike. But the world may be afraid of this as a precedent. And that is why the position of China is very important, as it sincerely supports Russia in its attempts to defeat Ukraine, but without using nuclear weapons, so as not to create such a dangerous precedent," the journalist commented.According to him, the third factor, which is very important, is that the very essence of war is changing. For example, the latest Ukrainian Spider's Web operation, as well as the Mossad's special operation in Iran, demonstrated that it is possible to inflict such serious infrastructure damage on a country without nuclear weapons, which could lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, and put an end to the life of a number of regions. That is, the operation could be as powerful as non-nuclear weapons and equal to a nuclear strike.And the next very important factor that is unlikely to allow the Russian president to consider the use of nuclear weapons is Donald Trump, who is really an unpredictable person in terms of his emotional reactions. Trump never knows what he will do in 24 hours. And Putin himself will have to decide what Trump's reaction will be if Russia uses nuclear weapons," the journalist noted.Portnikov does not see an urgent need for Putin to be ready to use nuclear weapons, because the Kremlin leader may try to implement his plans for Ukraine with conventional weapons in the coming years."But even under such conditions, I see no real possibility of using nuclear weapons during Donald Trump's presidency. In 2029, we will be able to return to this topic. And, given the personality of the new U.S. president and the intensity of the Russian-Ukrainian war at the moment, we can discuss such chances," the publicist summarized.Earlier, the Belarusian media outlet Nasha Niva reported that during the joint Russia-Belarus West 2025 exercise, the military plans to practice strikes with tactical nuclear weapons and Oreshnik.