Russian President Vladimir Putin has once again raised the nuclear threat on the eve of the elections that will be held in Russia starting this Friday. Putin stressed this Wednesday that his nuclear forces are prepared to act at any time. “From a military-technical point of view, of course we are prepared. “Our forces are constantly in a state of combat readiness,” the president declared, two days before the start of elections that will be held from Friday, March 15 to Sunday, March 17, in an interview for the public television channel Rossiya 1.
The interview was conducted by Dmitri Kisilov, head of one of the Kremlin’s propaganda groups, Rossiya Segodnia. The Russian leader also considers that his forces are slightly ahead of the United States: “We have made a lot of progress, our nuclear triad – silos, bombers and nuclear submarines – is more modern,” stressed Putin, who has recognized that there is a race nuclear with Washington.
“They are developing new components, so are we, but this does not mean that they are prepared to unleash this nuclear war tomorrow. And if they want, what do we do? “We are ready,” Putin said.
Despite sending these messages, the president has insisted to Kisilov that it has not crossed his mind to use nuclear weapons in these two years of war against Ukraine. “There has never been that need,” Putin has emphasized, although he has stressed that all weapons “exist to be used” and the use of this last letter is foreseen “if we talk about the existence of the Russian State and the damage to our sovereignty and independence”. According to Putin’s statements, the Kremlin would adhere to the nuclear doctrine that it has made public in writing and would not use these weapons to turn around a lost war abroad.
One of the critical moments for the Kremlin was the withdrawal of its armed forces in Kharkiv and Kherson in the fall of 2022. Ukraine began to receive some more help from the West, and Russian troops retreated to a more defensible line that was fortified during the long months in which weapons arrived in kyiv in dribs and drabs. “That retreat did not mean at all that our front was crumbling. Nothing like this happened. “This was done simply to avoid causing unnecessary losses among military personnel,” the Russian president said.
Talks
A year and a half later, Western aid to Ukraine is in question and Putin sees himself in an advantageous position, which is why he maintains that any negotiations with kyiv must be subject to Moscow’s interests. “Are we ready to negotiate? Yes, we are ready, but only we are prepared for negotiations that do not start from ‘desires’ arising from taking psychotropic drugs, but from the reality that has been created on the ground (the front)”, said the Russian leader at the interview.
Putin declared to Kisilov that he wants to resolve his conflicts with the West once and for all, and especially that with Ukraine. Putin’s objectives in his invasion have never been clear, especially in terms of his territorial expansion – he announced his offensive in 2022 as a special military operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine – although the general consensus is that the Kremlin wants to establish in Kiev a Moscow’s clientelistic regime similar to Aleksandr Lukashenko’s Belarusian regime.
“Negotiating because they are running out of ammunition would be ridiculous on our part,” Putin reiterated. “We must clearly understand that this should not be a pause that the enemy wants to take to rearm, but rather a serious conversation with security guarantees for the Russian Federation,” added the president, who reiterated before the elections that his armed forces will not abandon the Ukrainian territories that Russia has illegally annexed: the provinces of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea.
This same line was maintained by the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, María Zajárova, who accused kyiv of carrying out “terrorist activities” by attacking several Russian regions with drones and provoking skirmishes on its border days before the elections. In addition to hitting refineries and fuel depots, some Ukrainian projectiles exploded this Tuesday in the City Hall and other civilian buildings on the Belgorod border, causing several injuries.
“This also has implications for elections in the Russian Federation. “This intensification of attacks is aimed at intimidating people and not giving them the opportunity to vote normally, even in the relevant regions – those annexed by Russia,” Zakharova said on Wednesday.
Russia will deploy troops to Finland
While deploying thousands of soldiers around Ukraine, Putin demanded that NATO in the months before his invasion return to the borders it had in 1997, before enlargement to Eastern Europe. Moscow demanded that the Atlantic Alliance reach only as far as Germany. However, their war had the opposite effect and Finland and Sweden, neutral until now, requested—and received—immediate accession to the military bloc.
“They have done it for purely political considerations. “Probably, they really wanted to be a member of a Western club under some kind of umbrella,” has been Putin’s view of the accession of these Nordic countries to the Alliance. “We didn’t have troops there, but now we will. There were no destruction systems there, but now there will be,” Putin has warned in relation to Finland, with whom he shares 1,340 kilometers of border. “Our economic relations were very good. They had our market, we bought a lot from them. What’s wrong with this? But now the situation will change.”
For her part, the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, María Zajárova, delved into the dissensions within NATO regarding military support for Ukraine, a position that is clearly supported by the countries bordering Russia, such as the Baltic States and Poland, but that each It is increasingly doubtful in the United States whether Donald Trump wins the presidential election. In statements to the Reuters agency, the senior official stated that the war in Ukraine “could get out of control and expand geographically due to the reckless actions of one or two members of the military alliance.”
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