President Vladimir Putin told Western countries on Thursday (29) that they risk provoking a nuclear war if they send troops to fight in Ukraine, warning that Moscow has the weapons to attack targets in the West.
The war in Ukraine has triggered the worst crisis in Moscow’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Putin had already spoken of the dangers of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, but his nuclear warning this Thursday was one of the most explicit.
Addressing lawmakers and other members of the country’s elite, Putin repeated his accusation that the West was bent on weakening Russia.
He suggested that Western leaders did not understand how dangerous their meddling in what he considered Russia’s own internal affairs could be.
He introduced his nuclear warning with a specific reference to an idea, floated by French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, for European NATO members to send ground troops to Ukraine – a suggestion that was quickly rejected by the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and others.
“(Western nations) must understand that we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory. All this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and the destruction of civilization. Don’t they realize that?” said Putin.
Speaking ahead of presidential elections on March 15-17, when he is certain to be re-elected for another six-year term, he praised what he said was Russia’s vastly modernized nuclear arsenal, the largest in the world.
“Strategic nuclear forces are in a state of full readiness,” he said, noting that the new-generation hypersonic nuclear weapons he first spoke of in 2018 had been deployed or were in a phase where development and testing was being carried out. completed.
Visibly angry, Putin suggested that Western politicians remember the fate of people like Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany and Napoleon Bonaparte of France, who unsuccessfully invaded Russia in the past.
“Now the consequences will be much more tragic,” Putin said. “They think (the war) is a caricature,” he said, accusing Western politicians of forgetting what a real war meant because they did not face the same security challenges that the Russians have faced over the past three decades.
More troops to the border
Russian forces now have the initiative on the battlefield in Ukraine and are advancing in several places, Putin said.
Russia should also reinforce the troops it deployed along its western borders with the European Union, after Finland and Sweden decided to join the NATO military alliance, he added.
The veteran Kremlin leader dismissed Western suggestions that Russian forces could go beyond Ukraine and attack European countries as “absurd.”
He also said that Moscow would not repeat the Soviet Union’s mistake and allow the West to “drag” it into an arms race that would consume much of its budget.
“Therefore, our task is to develop the defense industrial complex in order to increase the country’s scientific, technological and industrial potential,” he stated.
Putin said Moscow is open to discussions on nuclear strategic stability with the United States, but suggested Washington has no genuine interest in such talks and is more focused on making false claims about Moscow’s supposed goals.
“Recently, there have been more and more unfounded accusations against Russia, for example, that we are allegedly going to deploy nuclear weapons in space. Such insinuation is a ploy to get us to negotiate on your terms, which are favorable only to the United States,” he said.
“On the eve of the US presidential elections, they simply want to show their citizens and everyone else that they still rule the world.”
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