Belarus' Lukashenko says Russian nuclear shift was overdue, may prompt West to cool down

(Reuters) - Changes announced by Russia to its nuclear weapons policy were long overdue and will probably "cool the ardour" of its Western enemies, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview released on Sunday.

Lukashenko, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, said "hotheads" in the West had already heard the nuclear signals being sent by Moscow even before the Kremlin leader announced the changes last month.

Putin said on Sept. 25 that Russia was extending the list of scenarios that could prompt it to consider launching a nuclear weapon, including if it had reliable information about a massive cross-border attack against it involving aircraft, missiles or drones. He said Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.

The announcement was the Kremlin's answer to deliberations in the United States and Britain about whether or not to give Ukraine permission to fire Western-supplied long-range conventional missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia.

"This doctrine should have been renewed long ago," said Lukashenko, who last year agreed with Putin on the stationing of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

He told a Russian TV reporter that Western missiles would "already be bombing us, especially Russia" if the West had not paid attention to Putin's earlier nuclear signals. But the change to the nuclear doctrine "probably cools their ardour", he added.

Ukraine has accused Russia of nuclear blackmail and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has urged the West to ignore Putin's "red lines". Moscow says its warnings are for real, and Putin has said the U.S. and its allies will be fighting Russia directly if they give the green light for Kyiv to fire U.S. ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles deep into Russia.

(Reporting by Filipp Lebedev; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and David Evans)