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Gamblers at Polymarket are betting on the detonation of a nuclear weapon by year's end (2024).
This comes as Moscow warned the US over the Biden Administration allowing Ukraine to hit Russian soil with longer-range weapons.
Ukraine reportedly targeted a Russian weapons depot following this decision.
The Kremlin was swift in its condemnation.
“It is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps, and they have been talking about this, to continue adding fuel to the fire and provoking further escalation of tensions around this conflict,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia went further at a U.N. Security Council meeting marking 1,000 days of war, saying Moscow is “astounded” that the leaders of Britain and France “are eager to play into the hands of the exiting administration and are dragging not just their countries but the entire Europe into large-scale escalation with drastic consequences.”
The scope of the new firing guidelines isn’t clear. But the change came after the U.S., South Korea and NATO said North Korean troops are in Russia and apparently are being deployed to help Moscow drive Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk border region.
Biden’s decision almost entirely was triggered by North Korea’s entry into the fight, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, and was made just before he left for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.
Russia also is slowly pushing Ukraine’s outnumbered army backward in the eastern Donetsk region. It has also conducted a devastating aerial campaign against civilian areas in Ukraine.
Peskov referred journalists to a statement from President Vladimir Putin in September in which he said allowing Ukraine to target Russia would significantly raise the stakes.
It would change “the very nature of the conflict dramatically,” Putin said at the time. “This will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia.”
Gamblers aren't so sure Armageddon is immediately around the corner however.
Only 5 percent of those betting believe Russia will launch a nuclear weapon.
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