‘Russia won’t let itself be destroyed’: Vladimir Putin issues warning to the West
In a major policy speech, Vladimir Putin warns of dangerous, unpredictable times ahead as he claims to have no nuclear ambition beyond defending Russian territory.
Vladimir Putin has warned that the coming decade would be the “most dangerous, unpredictable and crucial” time since the end of WWII.
The Russian president delivered an annual address to the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow on Thursday, stressing that he had no nuclear ambitions beyond defending Russian territory “for its right to exist”. He added Russia “won’t let itself be destroyed and wiped off the geopolitical map”.
Mr Putin said Russia had only “hinted” at its response to any nuclear attack, drawing on a comment by the former UK prime minister Liz Truss whom he described as “a bit out of it” when she had given a comment that Britain had nuclear weapons.
“We have never said anything proactively about a nuclear threat by Russia,’’ Mr Putin said, adding: “We have only hinted at a response to what the Western leaders have said.”
He said Russia was being “blackmailed” and questioned “what should we do in response? Pretend we haven’t heard anything?”
Mr Putin’s major foreign policy speech came several days after fears escalated about a Kremlin false flag operation following Russia’s diplomatic calls to western countries about a Ukraine dirty bomb. A day earlier, Mr Putin had also overseen an extensive test of nuclear missiles across Russia.
The Russian president said he had instructed defence minister Sergei Shoigu to approach the west because Russian intelligence had uncovered the existence of a dirty bomb being manufactured by Ukraine.
He said a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine did not make military or political sense.
In similar themes to previous speeches, he said the west was incapable of unilaterally governing all of humanity.
“The historical period of undivided domination for the West is coming to an end: we are facing historic milestone; ahead of us is possibly the most dangerous, unpredictable and crucial decade since end of World War II.”
Optimists might draw a glimmer of hope from a small part of the speech in which Mr Putin
mentioned that “the new centres of the global order and the west will have to begin a conversation about the future – the earlier the better”.
But he insisted such talks would have to be on Russia’s terms and claimed Russia’s approaches to the West had been shunted aside.
Mr Putin said Russia told the west: “Let’s be friends, have dialogue and strengthen trust and peace. We were completely sincere. What did we get in response? A ‘no’ on every possible area of co-operation.”
He insisted Russia was “not challenging the western elite. We are not trying to become the hegemon.”
Instead, he blamed western leaders for “fuelling” the conflict in Ukraine, organising politicians around Taiwan, and destabilising the world’s food and energy markets.
He added that Russia would never accept Western countries telling it what to do, and the longer the West took to realise this, the greater the price would be.
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