Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned that the risk of nuclear war was on the rise — as he admitted Russia’s war in Ukraine could become a “long process.”
The Russian ruler discussed the threat of nuclear war while addressing Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council, the latest in a series of nuclear flirtations since the tide of the nine-month war in Ukraine has begun to shift in Kyiv’s favor.
“Such a threat is growing, it would be wrong to hide it,” he said.
While Putin indicated Russia would not be a nuclear aggressor, he stopped short of ruling out a first strike.
“We haven’t gone mad, we realize what nuclear weapons are,” he said in the televised appearance before the council. “We have these means in more advanced and modern form than any other nuclear country … But we aren’t about to run around the world brandishing this weapon like a razor.”
But when pushed by a council member to promise not to use nuclear weapons unless another nation uses them first, Putin would not.
“If [a country] doesn’t use [nukes] first under any circumstances, it means that it won’t be the second to use it either, because the possibility of using it in case of a nuclear strike on our territory will be sharply limited,” Putin said.
He added that his constant reminders of Russia’s nuclear arsenal were “not a factor provoking an escalation of conflicts, but a factor of deterrence.”
The leader has repeatedly said Russia would use “all available means” to defend Russian territory — including the occupied territories the Kremlin claims to have annexed. But he acknowledged that the war in Ukraine could “might be a long process.”
The address was part of Putin’s annual meeting with the human rights body — which was told ahead of time not to ask too many probing questions about the war, Russian independent outlet Verstka reported.
Putin did praise the war, however, saying Russia had achieved a “significant result” in the acquisition of “new territories”– a reference to the Kremlin’s illegal annexations.
He claimed to have made the Sea of Azov — bordered on one side by Russia and on the other by the Ukrainian provinces of Zaporzhzhia and Donetsk — into an “internal sea” of Russia’s.
“Peter the Great fought to get access to the Sea of Azov,” Putin added, comparing himself to the 18th Century Imperial Russian tsar and father of the Russian Navy.
Putin did not address Russia’s significant battlefield losses, however.
In recent months Russian forces have been pushed out of the Kharkiv province by a Ukrainian counteroffensive, and retreated from the city of Kherson — the one regional capital Moscow had managed to take.
Despite fierce fighting on the outskirts of Bakhmut in the Donetsk province, neither Ukraine nor Russia has gained significant territory.
And in a surprise turn this week, multiple military airfields inside Russia have been hit by drone strikes thought to be launched by Kyiv — another topic Putin did not address.
The Russian president did, however, express outrage on what he said was the West’s refusal to acknowledge civilian casualties of Ukrainian shelling in the Russian-occupied provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.
With wires
