“We have not gone crazy, we know what nuclear weapons are,” Putin told a televised meeting with the Russian Human Rights Council.
After the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Russian authorities repeatedly stopped planning the possibility of using the nuclear weapon in case of a threat to its territorial integrity, which includes the annexed regions of Ukraine.
Those proclamations raised fears and accusations around the world.
Far from Armageddon
Putin’s statement now seems to allay those concerns, at least as far as a Russian-led apocalypse is concerned.
“We consider weapons of mass destruction, the nuclear weapon, as a means of defense. (Using it) is based on what we call ‘retaliatory attack’: if we are attacked, we respond.”he claimed.
However, he added that “the threat of nuclear war is growing” and he blamed this on the Americans and Europeans, who give Ukraine strong financial and military backing.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to respond directly to Putin, but said “any light talk about nuclear weapons is absolutely irresponsible.”
Putin also accused the UN and to other international organizations, as well as the Western media, for having a biased and anti-Russian attitude towards Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine and for propagating “blatant lies”.
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A longer war than expected
Putin admitted that the conflict is lasting longer than he thoughtbut claimed that Russia had obtained “significant results” in these nine months, in reference to Moscow’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions.
In the last weeks, Russian troops suffered, however, several setbacks and they had to withdraw from the city of Jerson (south).
The Kremlin justified the invasion of Ukraine by the need to defend the Russian-speaking population and to break the alliance between kyiv and the West, which it considers a strategic threat.
The European Union proposed this Wednesday to adopt sanctions against the armed forces and against three other banks in Russia, as part of the ninth package of restrictive measures imposed by the war.
He ruled out a new mobilization of reservists
Putin announced that he has already deployed 150,000 reservists to Ukraine, half the 300,000 mobilized in September. Among those recruits, some 77,000 are on the front line, he said.
putin ruled out for the moment a new mobilization of reservists.
On the ground, the shelling continued on Wednesday, with six civilians killed and five wounded in a Russian attack on the city of Kurajove, near Donetsk (east), where most of the fighting is currently concentrated.
“A market, a bus station, gas stations and residential buildings were the targets of the attacks,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
The day before in Donetsk, under the control of pro-Russian separatists since 2014, six civilians were killed in Ukrainian attacks, according to local authorities.
Faced with repeated setbacks, the Kremlin decided in October to concentrate its bombardments against Ukrainian energy facilities, depriving the population of electricity, water and heating at the dawn of winter.
Ukrainian wildlife has also paid a heavy price, with thousands of dolphins killed in the Black Sea in recent months.
The Ukrainian president, who was named Time magazine’s 2022 character of the year, said his country is “collecting evidence of these crimes” to “hold Russia accountable” for this “ecocide.”
Source: Ambito
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