Putin denies plan to nuke Ukraine, says US playing ‘dangerous, bloody’ game
A defiant Vladimir Putin railed at the US and its allies Thursday, accusing them of playing a “dangerous, bloody and dirty” game of global domination — and denied that Russia has ever considered using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Speaking at a conference of international foreign policy experts in Moscow, Putin said it was unnecessary for Russia to strike Ukraine with atomic weapons.
“We see no need for that,” Putin said. “There is no point in that, neither political, nor military.”
Putin said an earlier warning of his readiness to use “all means available to protect Russia” didn’t amount to nuclear saber-rattling but was merely a response to statements made by Western leaders — specifically now-former British Prime Minister Liz Truss — about their possible use.
“What were we supposed to think?” Putin said. “We saw that as a coordinated position, an attempt to blackmail us.”
He said Russia’s military doctrine was defensive in comments that came a day after his country’s military carried out drills simulating a retaliatory nuclear strike.
In one of his longest public addresses since the invasion of Ukraine — clocking in at more than 3 hours — a seemingly relaxed and confident Putin warned that the world was at a “historic frontier.”
“Ahead is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, important decade since the end of World War Two,” the Kremlin leader said.
Putin did not miss an opportunity to hit out at the West, arguing that the United States and its allies mean to maintain their “undivided” global dominance over world affairs.
As he has done many times in the past, the 70-year-old president accused Russia’s Western foes of undermining “traditional values” and imposing a decadent culture with “dozens of genders [and] gay parades” on other countries.
Turning his attention to Ukraine during the question-and-answer session, Putin paradoxically claimed that only Russia can guarantee its neighbor’s territorial integrity.
He painted the ongoing conflict as a “civil war”, invoking his long-held belief that Russia and Ukraine are part of a single people, and that Ukraine is an “artificial state” — an idea Kyiv vehemently rejects.
He also said that he thinks “all the time” of Russian casualties in Ukraine, but avoided getting into detail about what the West says are huge losses.
According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, more than 69,000 Russian troops have been killed during the eight-month war.
Putin blamed the bloody operation on NATO’s refusal to rule out Ukraine’s prospective membership and Kyiv’s unwillingness to stick to a peace deal with separatists in the Donbas region, arguing that Russia had no choice but to intervene.
He denied underestimating Ukraine’s ability to fight back and insisted that his “special military operation” has proceeded as planned.
Putin again repeated the unsubstantiated claim that Ukraine could denotate a “dirty bomb” as part of a “false flag” attack intended to cast blame on Russia and further isolate it on the global stage.
Kyiv and its Western allies denied the allegation as false and baseless.
A suggestion by Ukraine that Russia’s “dirty bomb” allegation might mean Moscow plans to detonate such a device itself was also false, Putin said.
“We don’t need to do that. There would be no sense whatsoever in doing that,” Putin said, adding that the Kremlin had responded to what it felt was nuclear blackmail by the West.
Asked if there had been any disappointments in the past year, Putin answered simply: “No,”
With Post wires
