Vladimir Putin has doubled down on his threat to use nuclear weapons, vowing to ‘go to the end’ in Ukraine – even as he’s accidentally dropped three more bombs in Russia.
He accused the West of raising the temperature by green lighting Ukraine’s use of NATO weapons inside Russia and seeking his ‘strategic defeat’ in the war.
Putin, 71, made clear he is ready to redraw his nuclear doctrine to make it easier to unleash the ultimate weapons.
He spoke shortly before Ukraine unleashed one of its heaviest kamikaze drone barrages of the war, hitting Yeysk airbase and Ilsky oil refinery in Krasnodar region, and a major Lukoil oil depot in Volgograd.
The dictator – speaking at the end of his visits to North Korea and Vietnam – said the West ‘constantly raise the stakes and escalate the situation’ around Ukraine.
He said: ‘They seem to think that at some point we will get scared. But at the same time, they also say they want to achieve a strategic defeat of Russia on the battlefield.’
He irrationally claimed that driving his invading forces out of Ukraine would lead to the end of Russia, before vowing to ‘go all the way’.
Putin added: ‘And then the question arises: why should we be afraid? Isn’t it better to go all the way, until the end? This is elementary formal logic….
’I think that those [in the West] who think this way, and even more so those who say it, are making another big mistake.’
Citing no evidence, he claimed the West were lowering the threshold for use of atomic weapons.
He added: ‘We are thinking about what could be changed in the nuclear doctrine.’
This already allows Russia to use tactical nuclear weapons based on certain large conventional strikes to his territory posing an existential threat.
The latest thinly veiled threats come as it was revealed Russian forces have dropped 103 bombs on its own territory in the past four months, Astra reported.
Most of the regions where Russian weapons were found were nearby Ukraine.
Such mistakes have left homes destroyed, cars burnt out, and Russian citizens fearing for their lives at the hands of their own army’s incompetence.
The UK government blamed the accidental bombings on poor training and fatigue, Newsweek reported.
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