Putin won’t dare press the nuclear button, says top Zelensky adviser

Mykhailo Podolyak insists the war can end only with expulsion of Russian troops from all of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea - and nuclear war would spell the end for their political elite.

Ukrainian servicemen cover their ears as they fire a 60mm mortar toward Russian positions on the Donetsk front on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Western countries should ignore Russia’s nuclear threats, a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, after Moscow warned that the supply of more American and European weapons to Ukraine could trigger a nuclear conflict.

“Putin is not ready to press the red button,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, told The Times.

“Any use of nuclear weapons, even tactical ones, would lead to the inevitable death of most of the Russian political elite. They understand this very well.”

Mr Podolyak said Russia had received a “clear warning” from other nuclear powers that it would face “immediate retribution” if it launched a nuclear strike on Ukraine or its western allies. He did not say which countries had issued the warning.

He made his comments after Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian parliament and one of President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, said using western weapons against Russian forces in Ukraine could result in a “terrible war”. He said last week: “Foreign politicians making such decisions need to understand that this could end in a global tragedy that will destroy their countries.”

A woman looks at destroyed Russian military vehicles on display in central Kyiv.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former prime minister and now deputy head of Mr Putin’s national security council, has said Russia could resort to nuclear weapons in the event of its army’s defeat on the battlefields of Ukraine. Russia recently tested the strike capabilities of its hypersonic Zircon missiles in the Atlantic Ocean as a show of force.

However, Mr Podolyak dismissed Russian rhetoric as an attempt to blackmail the West and insisted Moscow had no intention of following through on its apocalyptic threats. “The Russian political elite wants to frighten other countries but at the same time they want to have a guaranteed life of luxury,” he said. “I would recommend paying less attention to the comments of people like Volodin and Medvedev. Their aim is to sow panic in Europe.”

Mr Podolyak, 50, is a former journalist who was appointed as an adviser to Ukraine’s presidential office in 2020. He is seen as the country’s third most powerful figure after Mr Zelensky and Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff.

He said Ukraine had no doubt that Washington’s support for Kyiv would continue, irrespective of the results of next year’s US presidential election. A slight majority of Republicans want congress to oppose further funding for Ukraine, according to a recent CBS News/YouGov poll.

He insisted the war could end only with expulsion of Russian troops from all of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, which was annexed by the Kremlin in 2014. “Any other scenario would mean the end of the Ukrainian state,” Mr Podolyak said. “Russia would continue to attack Ukraine from the occupied territories and we would be unable to attract (foreign) investment and rebuild the economy. Ukraine would sooner or later be destroyed by Russia. We want our western allies to understand this.”

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, says Vladimir Putin knows nuclear war will lead to the ‘inevitable death’ of his country’s political elite.

As Kyiv seeks more western weapons, Mr Zelensky has been eager to demonstrate that Ukraine is fighting against the entrenched corruption that has plagued the country since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. More than a dozen Ukrainian officials were dismissed or resigned last week amid the biggest shake-up of the political scene since the start of the war. Mr Podolyak said the move was to boost trust in the government among Ukrainians and the country’s western allies. “We want our partners to believe in the Ukrainian state, to understand that we will very severely punish any manifestations of corruption,” he said. “No one will be able to steal the aid that we are being provided with.”

Russia’s most popular search engine has been modified to prevent images of Mr Putin coming up when users enter insulting or obscene terms. Yandex, often called Russia’s Google, has ensured that pictures of the president are no longer returned by searches for “khuylo”, which translates as “dickhead”. Since 2014 “Putin khuylo!” has been a common refrain in Ukraine.

Other terms that Yandex has tried to dissociate from Mr Putin are “the main thief”, “the grandad in the bunker” and “when will he drop dead?”, according to Meduza, an outlawed Russian opposition website. The Kremlin tightened its grip over the internet in August with the announcement that parts of Yandex were being bought by VK, a state-controlled social media company.

The Times