MOSCOW, Feb 26 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin has cast the West’s confrontation over the war in Ukraine as an existential battle for the survival of Russia and the Russian people – and said he is being forced to consider nuclear capabilities. in NATO.
A year since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Putin increasingly presents the war as a make-or-break moment in Russian history – and says he believes the future of Russia and its people is in danger.
“They have one goal: the disintegration of the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part – the Russian Federation,” Putin told Rossiya 1 state television in an interview recorded on Wednesday but released on Sunday.
NATO and the West reject such a narrative, saying their goal is to help Ukraine defend itself against an unprovoked attack.
Putin says the West wants to divide Russia and then take control of the world’s largest producer of raw materials, a move, he said, that could lead to the destruction of many Russian people including its ethnic majority. which is Russian.
Latest Updates
See 2 more stories
“I don’t know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will survive in the form in which it exists today,” Putin said. He said the West’s plans had been put on paper, although he did not specify where.
The United States has denied that it wants to destroy Russia, while President Joe Biden has warned that a conflict between Russia and NATO could trigger World War III, although he also said that he would not stay in power. Putin.
Putin said that tens of billions of dollars worth of US and European military aid to Ukraine showed that Russia was now facing NATO itself – the Cold War nightmare of Soviet and Western leaders.
Ukraine says it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is expelled from Ukraine, including from Crimea annexed by Russia in 2014.
RUSSIA
Putin’s existential framing of war allows the 70-year-old Kremlin chief to arm the Russian people for a deeper conflict while it also allows him greater freedom in the types of weapons he can use in a day.
Russia’s official nuclear doctrine allows 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, endangering “the very existence of the state .”
Putin has signaled that he is ready to dismantle the nuclear arms control architecture – including the major powers’ moratorium on nuclear testing – unless the West turns its back on Ukraine.
On Tuesday, he sought to underline Russia’s decision in Ukraine by suspending a landmark nuclear arms control treaty, announcing new strategic systems put into combat duty and warning- that Moscow may resume nuclear tests.
Putin said Russia would only continue the discussion if French and British nuclear weapons were also considered.
Russia, which inherited the nuclear weapons of the Soviet Union, has the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world. It has more warheads than the United States, France and Britain combined, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
“In the current circumstances, if all the leading NATO countries have declared their main objective as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people will suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?” Putin said.
Putin said that the biggest result of the last year was the unity of the Russian people.
Reporting by Reuters, editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Tomasz Janowski
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
