Russia ready for nuclear war, Vladimir Putin warns West

In a rambling interview, Putin said he wouldn’t hesitate to use nuclear missiles if there were threats to the existence of the Russian state.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a TV interview on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

President Putin has warned that Russia is ready for nuclear war over Ukraine and described western leaders as “vampires” with a taste for “human flesh”.

In a rambling interview broadcast yesterday by state television, on the eve of presidential elections tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Putin, 71, said he would not hesitate to use nuclear missiles if there were threats to the existence of the Russian state or its sovereignty and independence.

“Weapons exist in order to use them,” he added, boasting that Russia’s nuclear triad of land, air and sea-based missiles was far more advanced than America’s.

Russia has the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world, with 5580 warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists. The US has the world’s second biggest stockpile, with 5044.

The interview was conducted by Dmitry Kiselyov, a state television presenter who once said that Russia was the only country in the world that was able to reduce the US to “radioactive ash”.

Yesterday, when Kiselyov asked if a nuclear confrontation with the West over Ukraine was inevitable, Putin replied that he had not yet seen the need to use nuclear weapons. “I don’t think everything is rushing directly towards this, but we are ready,” he said.

He warned, however, that any deployment of US troops to Ukraine, including to occupied territory that Russia claims as its own, would be seen as an unacceptable intervention in the conflict. “I have said many times that [Ukraine] is a matter of life and death for us.”

NATO has said it has no plans to send soldiers to Ukraine, but President Macron has said that France could deploy its forces to prevent Russia seizing Kyiv or Odesa, the Black Sea port city.

The US has said it has seen no indications that Russia is preparing for nuclear strikes, but frequent warnings of nuclear conflict by Putin and other senior officials have prompted concern in Washington.

In late 2022, with Russian troops facing a rout in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, the White House began “preparing rigorously” for a Kremlin nuclear attack on Ukrainian forces, CNN reported last week, citing two US administration officials.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine lists four scenarios under which nuclear weapons would be used: if Russia is attacked with nuclear missiles; if it believes nuclear missiles have been launched against it; if any attack is aimed at crippling its nuclear forces; or if the existence of the Russian state is threatened, including by the use of conventional weapons.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank, said in January that Russia would feel emboldened to use nuclear weapons because it believes that the US would lack the resolve to respond because it is “casualty and risk averse”.

It added: “Russia may seek to use enough non-strategic nuclear weapons to inflict damage preventing its own defeat, knowing that the US would be unwilling to cross the nuclear threshold in retaliation, and may be willing to terminate the conflict early.”

Non-strategic nuclear weapons are nuclear warheads designed to be used on the battlefield. They have a lower range and yield than strategic nuclear missiles, which can flatten cities.

Kiselyov asked Putin how it felt to be a figure of “hope” for billions of people across the world who sought “international justice, the protection of human dignity, [and] the protection of traditional values”.

He replied: “I am simply fulfilling my duty to Russia and to our people, who consider Russia their motherland. Western elites have been accustomed for centuries to fill their bellies with human flesh and their pockets with money. But they must understand that their vampire ball is ending.”

He said that Russia was open to peace talks on Ukraine, but that they must be based on “reality” and “not on cravings after the use of psychotropic drugs”. He has previously accused President Zelensky and his government of being drug addicts, without providing any evidence. He appeared to repeat those claims in the interview, saying Russia’s adversaries had their “nose in cocaine”.

The Kremlin has said there can be no peace unless Kyiv surrenders four regions in the east and the south that Russia claims as its own. Zelensky has ruled out talks while Putin is in power and any surrender of land.

Putin said that NATO membership for Sweden and Finland would do nothing to ensure the security of the two Nordic countries and that Russia would now be forced to deploy troops and “systems of destruction” to the Finnish border.

“This is an absolutely meaningless step from the point of view of ensuring their own national interests,” he said.

Sweden became Nato’s 32nd member state last week, while Finland joined in April. Both applied for membership after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Putin, a former KGB officer who has been in power since 2000, will secure a new six-year term of office at the rubber-stamp presidential elections that run from tomorrow until Sunday.

Two opposition figures who sought to run against him on anti-war programs were banned from the elections, leaving three nominal, Kremlin-approved rivals.

Alexei Navalny, his biggest domestic critic, died last month in an Arctic prison. Western leaders say he was murdered on Putin’s orders.

This week Ukraine launched a massive wave of drone attacks on targets in Russia, including a vital oil refinery in the Nizhny Novgorod region, more than 600 miles from the border. The strikes coincided with cross-border attacks by Russian rebel units fighting for Ukraine.

The Times