Putin said the tens of billions of dollars’ worth of US and European military assistance to Ukraine showed that Russia was now facing off NATO itself – the Cold War nightmare of both Soviet and Western leaders.
Ukraine says it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected from Ukraine, including from Crimea which Russia annexed in 2014.
RUSSIA
Putin’s existential framing of the war allows the 70-year-old Kremlin chief to gird the Russian people for a much more deeper conflict while it also allows him much greater freedom in the types of weapons he could one day use.
Russia’s official nuclear doctrine allows for the use of nuclear weapons if they – or other types of weapons of mass destruction – are used against it, or if conventional weapons are used, which endanger “the very existence of the state”.
Putin has signalled he is ready to rip up the architecture of nuclear arms control – including the big powers’ moratorium on nuclear testing – unless the West backs off in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, he sought to underscore Russian resolve in Ukraine by suspending a landmark nuclear arms control treaty, announcing new strategic systems had been put on combat duty and warning that Moscow could resume nuclear tests.
Putin said Russia would only resume discussion once French and British nuclear weapons were also taken into account.
Russia, which inherited the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, has the world’s biggest store of nuclear warheads. It has more warheads than the United States, France and Britain combined, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
“In today’s conditions, when all the leading NATO countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?” Putin said.
Putin said the biggest result of the past year was the unity of the Russian people.
