MOSCOW - Discussion in the West about arming Ukraine with nuclear weapons is \"absolutely irresponsible\", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, in response to a report in the New York Times citing unidentified officials who suggested such a possibility.

Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia,

Putin lowered the bar for a nuclear attack after the US lifted a ban on Ukraine using long-range missiles. Ukraine carried out its first strike with the weapons.