Putin Raises the Danger of Nuclear War in Annual Address to the West
In his annual parliamentary address, Russian President Vladimir Putin ratcheted up his bellicose rhetoric and pledged to continue his attack on Ukraine, warning of a rising possibility of global conflict and the deployment of nuclear weapons.
Putin, while praising Russia’s military modernization, accused the West of attempting to lure Russia into a new arms race, as Moscow’s forces gain the upper hand and U.S. military support for Kyiv stalls.
On Thursday, the Russian leader addressed parliamentarians, asking, “Don’t they understand that?” He went on to say that all of this might lead to a nuclear war and the end of civilization.
Russia’s adversaries “must, after all, realize that we too have weapons that can hit targets on their territory,” Putin remarked, alluding to recent remarks made by French President Emmanuel Macron, who declined to rule out the possibility of Western troops being sent to Ukraine.
U.S.-Russian relations have hit rock bottom since the Cold War’s conclusion, with Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia is now completely cut off from the West due to its military missteps; despite heavy sanctions, the country’s war machine continues unabated.
In his address to the Federal Assembly last year, Putin said that Russia will withdraw from the New Start treaty—the last major U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons limitation treaty—because it was too costly and too burdensome. The continued existence of a long-standing international prohibition on nuclear weapons tests is called into doubt by his warning that Moscow is prepared to test new nuclear weapons should the United States initiate such a move.
U.S. intelligence reports that Russia is aiming to create a nuclear bomb capable of being launched into space and used to destroy satellites. Putin denied the allegations on Thursday, saying they were an attempt to tarnish Moscow’s reputation.
In the opening hour of his speech, Russia’s long-serving president, Putin, who has been in power for more than 20 years, reiterated a theme he has frequently used to defend his invasion of Ukraine, accusing Russian MPs of plotting to depose Moscow.
What the West is trying to accomplish with Russia is similar to what they did in Ukraine and other regions: sow dissension within Russia in order to undermine it from within, he claimed. “No one will be able to meddle in our internal affairs.”
He accused the United States of being involved with a state whose elites were actively working to undermine the country’s sovereignty.
Putin made it clear in his speech, which was shown live in select theaters across the nation, that Russia will go to “absolutely everything” to continue its military action in Ukraine.
Due to a lack of equipment and the stalemate in Congress over U.S. military aid, Moscow now has the upper hand in the conflict with Ukraine. Worries in the West regarding the war’s trajectory have been heightened by Russia’s conquest of Avdiivka this month. This marks Putin’s largest battlefield triumph since May 2023, when his forces captured Bakhmut. This comes after Kyiv’s counteroffensive last year was unsuccessful.
Putin’s comments coincide with Russia’s upcoming presidential election next month, when he is expected to easily win thanks to a massive assault on opposition groups and independent media.
Russian political prisoner Alexei Navalny, who was serving a 30-year term for a number of charges that he and his followers claimed were politically motivated, passed away earlier this month. Navalny had been his fiercest opponent. The opposition leader’s relatives and friends have accused Putin of ordering Navalny’s death, a charge that the Kremlin has denied.
Security personnel may clash with Navalny’s followers at his funeral on Friday; several of his followers have been detained for doing nothing more than placing flowers in his memory in the days following his death.
Putin has reinforced his grip on power through repression, which includes passing legislation to penalize war opponents, silencing the majority of independent media outlets, labeling pro-peace writers and artists as foreign agents—a pejorative term—and limiting the freedom of Russians to express their own views on the conflict. According to local and international human-rights activists, over 20,000 individuals have been arbitrarily jailed in the last two years, with the bulk of those detained being ordinary Russians. This repression of dissent has largely targeted these individuals.
