President Vladimir Putin warned Western countries on Thursday that there was a genuine risk of nuclear war if they sent their own troops to fight in Ukraine, and he said Moscow had the weapons to strike targets in the West.
Addressing parliament and other members of the country’s elite, Putin, 71, repeated his accusation that the West is bent on weakening Russia, and he suggested Western leaders did not understand how dangerous their meddling could be in what he cast as Russia’s own internal affairs.
He prefaced his warning with a specific reference to an idea, floated by French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, of European Nato members sending ground troops to Ukraine – a suggestion that was quickly rejected by the United States, Germany, Britain and others.
“[Western nations] must realise 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 civilisation. Don’t they get that?!” said Putin.
The Russian leader also said his troops are ready for combat.
“The combat capabilities of the armed forces have increased multifold. Our units firmly hold the initiative [in Ukraine]. They are confidently advancing in a number of operational directions, liberating new territories,” he said.
Putin also stated that the war in Ukraine was about defending sovereign Russian territory.
“Today, when our homeland is defending its sovereignty and security and protecting the lives of our fellow countrymen in Donbas and Novorossiya (regions of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed), the decisive role in this righteous struggle belongs to our citizens, our unity, devotion to our native country and responsibility for its fate.”
“We did not start this war in Donbas. As I have said many times, we will do everything to end it, to eradicate Nazism. To fulfil all the tasks of the special military operation. To protect the sovereignty and security of our citizens.”
Putin, who was speaking ahead of a March 15-17 presidential election when he is certain to be re-elected for another six-year term, lauded what he said was Russia’s vastly modernised nuclear arsenal, the largest in the world.
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“We understand that the West is trying to drag us into an arms race. They are trying to wear us down, to repeat the trick they succeeded [in pulling off] with the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
“Therefore, our task is to develop the defence-industrial complex in such a way as to increase the scientific, technological and industrial potential of the country.”
The war in Ukraine has triggered the worst crisis in Moscow’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and Putin has previously warned of the dangers of a direct confrontation between Nato and Russia.
Visibly angry, Putin, Russia’s paramount leader for more than two decades, suggested Western politicians recall the fate of those, like Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler and France’s Napoleon Bonaparte who unsuccessfully invaded his country in the past.
“But now the consequences will be far more tragic,” said Putin. “They think it [war] is a cartoon,” he said.
Putin said Russia’s economy would soon be among the world’s four largest in terms of purchasing power parity.
Boasting vast natural resources, Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) rebounded sharply last year from a slump in 2022, but the growth relies heavily on state-funded arms and ammunition production for the war in Ukraine, masking problems that are hampering an improvement in Russians’ living standards.