Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the west of the danger of nuclear war if they deploy their own troops on the battle ground for Kyiv.
On his yearly state of the nation address on Thursday, Putin said claims that Russia intends to attack Europe are “nonsense” but warned that his country might attack Ukraine sympathizers with nukes.
President’s message was a reply to the idea given by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said that the possibility of sending western troops to Kyiv “cannot be ruled out”. The idea rejected by several European countries.
“Everything that they are coming up with now, with which they threaten the entire world – all this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore the destruction of civilization – don’t they understand this, or what?” Putin said.
“They must ultimately understand that we also have weapons – and they know about it, just as I now said – we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory,” he warned.
Putin has raised up the nuclear specter on quite a few occasions since Moscow started its full scale invasion of Ukraine more than 2 years ago. Russia transferred tactical nuclear weapons to its neighbor Belarus last year, and Russia is also developing a nuclear space weapon that could strike satellites.
His speech lasted for more than 2 hours which broke his previous record, as per Russian state media TASS. This came shortly before Russia goes into election mode on March 17 where Putin is expected to sweep its fifth term and extend its regime until at least 2030.
He praised the progress of Russian armed forces, which he said was “confidently advancing in numbers of operational areas and liberating more and more terrorists” and now it holds the initiative firmly in Kyiv.
Putin confirmed that Russia will bolster its military presence along its western borders to “neutralize the threats” of NATO expansion after Finland and Sweden joined the alliance.
Notwithstanding Western sanctions, President Putin said Russia’s economy has “moved on much more dynamically” than the rest of the globe, “mainly in regards to the other nations in the so-called G7.
He accepted that Russia is not at the “topmost” of its demography due to social fluctuations like young society chasing their careers and postponing having families. Like several countries, Russia is wrestling with the challenge of falling birth rates.
Conferring Russian health policy, he also recommended Russian citizens to obey to a Soviet-era motto, “Stop drinking, start skiing.”
Putin appreciated those who have served their motherland are its “true, real elite,” unlike traitors who “filled their pockets due to all sorts of processes in the economy in the 1990s” while the Soviet Union was crushed.
