Putin speaks about threat of nuclear war
The international arms deterrence system is on the verge of collapse, and this will lead the world to the “danger line” of a nuclear catastrophe, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at an annual press conference on Thursday.
In 2002, the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which had previously restricted the production of defense systems against nuclear missiles.
In response, Moscow “has been forced to respond by creating new weaponry systems” capable of bypassing the anti-missile defenses, Putin stated.
Now the US is accusing Russia of developing missiles prohibited by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, with a range between 500 and 5,500 km. According to Putin, Moscow will once again be forced to respond in order to “guarantee its own security”.
In 2021, the cornerstone treaty that brought an end to the Cold War will expire – the New START treaty, which limits both Russia and the US to a maximum of 1,550 nuclear warheads.
No attempt is being made to negotiate an extension of the treaty, Putin observed. “We will ensure our own security,” he promised, noting that a nuclear arms race would bring humanity to the “danger line”.
The possibility of a global nuclear war is underestimated, and this underestimation is increasing, Putin commented. “And if, God forbid, something like that were to arise, it could lead to the death of all civilization, perhaps even the planet,” he continued.
At the same time, there is a trend of lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons. “There are ideas to create low power nuclear charges. This is not a global, but a tactical usage,” Putin noted.
“Lowering the threshold could lead to a global catastrophe,” he added.
A second trend is of using non-nuclear ballistic missiles. “Indeed, our American partners have supposedly renounced this, but the idea itself exists,” the president said, as cited by Interfax.
Previously, Putin said that in the event of a nuclear war, Russians would “go to heaven”, but Russia’s enemies would “just die, because they won’t even have time to repent”.