By Vladimir Soldatkin

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) – Russia will continue to send nuclear warning signals to its Western enemies until they get the message, an influential foreign policy hawk said on Wednesday.

Security expert Sergei Karaganov has consistently urged President Vladimir Putin to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons, and in the past has even advocated a pre-emptive strike on a NATO country.

Putin said that Russia does not need to resort to nuclear weapons to achieve victory in the war in Ukraine. But in September he said Moscow was expanding the list of scenarios in which it would consider using such weapons.

Karaganov told Reuters he hoped strikes against Western countries would not take place. But he said Putin’s announced changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine were part of an effort to “wake up our Western partners, especially the Europeans.”

“That’s just it… There will be rungs on the nuclear escalation ladder, of which several have been made, (and) there will be more. Eventually the Europeans will flee,” he said.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Putin has made a series of statements interpreted by the West as nuclear threats. In September, he signaled that Moscow would consider responding with nuclear weapons if the US and its allies allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with long-range Western missiles.

He has also held a series of nuclear drills, changed Russia’s position on major arms treaties and announced the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in its ally Belarus, which borders three NATO countries.

Russia says it is the West that is raising the risk of a nuclear confrontation by arming Ukraine. It accuses the US and its allies of using Ukraine as a tool in a proxy war aimed at inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia.

Karaganov argues that Russia needs to restore the West’s fear of nuclear weapons to deter its enemies.

“They have stopped being afraid of war. And especially of Europeans. They are climbing into a third world war right before our eyes,” he said.

“They must be stopped, including by going up the scale of nuclear escalation and informing them in various ways — both militarily-technically and by changing (Russian nuclear) doctrine — that they will be the first to die in this war.”

He was speaking on the sidelines of an annual conference, the Valdai Forum, where Putin will speak Thursday and likely answer questions from Russian and Western experts about nuclear policy, the war in Ukraine and the future of Russia-US relations under a new Donald Trump presidency.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, writing by Mark Trevelyan, editing by Angus MacSwan)