President Vladimir Putin cautioned the West on Wednesday that the United States sending soldiers to Ukraine would be seen as a major escalation of the conflict and that Russia was prepared for nuclear war.
Days before an election scheduled for March 15–17, which is guaranteed to give Putin another six years in office, Putin said he did not believe that a nuclear war was “rushing” toward completion and that there was no need for nuclear weapons to be used in Ukraine.
Putin, 71, responded to a question about whether the nation was truly prepared for a nuclear war by saying, “From a military-technical point of view, we are, of course, ready,” on Rossiya-1 television and news agency RIA.
Putin said the U.S. understood that if it deployed American troops on Russian territory – or to Ukraine – Russia would treat the move as an intervention.
“(In the U.S.) there are enough specialists in the field of Russian American relations and in the field of strategic restraint,” said Putin, the ultimate decision maker in the world’s biggest nuclear power.
“Therefore, I don’t think that here everything is rushing to it (nuclear confrontation), but we are ready for this.”
Putin’s nuclear warning came alongside another offer for talks on Ukraine as part of a new post-Cold War demarcation of European security. The U.S. says Putin is not ready for serious talks over Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine has triggered the deepest crisis in Russia’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and Putin has warned several times the West risks provoking a nuclear war if it sends troops to fight in Ukraine.
Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, triggering full-scale war after eight years of conflict in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces on one side and pro-Russian Ukrainians and Russian proxies on the other.
