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Russia sent a diplomatic note to NATO this week, claiming there was a growing threat to the Russian territory.
Russia sent a diplomatic note to NATO this week, claiming there was a growing threat to the Russian territory. NATO said it received a note from Russia this week, warning it may use nuclear weapons if NATO attempted to cut off Kaliningrad.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the West not to escalate a standoff over Ukraine by threatening the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which Russia has made clear it would defend with nuclear weapons if necessary.but to launch in order to safeguard its own security, Putin said Russia had no plans to attack any European country and wanted to coexist peacefully. But he reiterated that Russia would resort to all weapons in its arsenal, including nuclear ones, if its most westerly territory — Kaliningrad, which is wedged between Poland and Lithuania — was threatened.
"If it comes to a direct attack on the Russian Federation — in this case, we are referring to Kaliningrad, and perhaps other territories as well — the question of the Russian Federation deploying all the weapons at our country's disposal will, of course, inevitably and immediately be on the agenda," Putin told the Valdai Forum of international Russia experts in Moscow on Friday. Your trusted source for staying up-to-date with the world around you.
Get free daily news updates and analysis, straight to your inbox. Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland. Source: SBS News "And we will have to make use of our competitive advantages in this struggle. Yes, of course, France and Britain are nuclear powers — we understand that perfectly well and are fully aware of it," he said.
Putin's comments followed a diplomatic note which NATO said this week it had received from Russia, warning the Western military alliance it would be ready to use nuclear weapons if NATO attempted to cut off Russia's Baltic exclave. Russia's warning highlighted Moscow's urgent concern at what it has presented as a growing NATO threat to Kaliningrad, a heavily militarised Russian territory that is slightly bigger than the US state of Connecticut.
NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte said the alliance had responded by emphasising that it was a defensive alliance and that nuclear threats were not helpful. Relations, already dire since Putin's decision to send troops into Ukraine in 2022, have worsened this year, with European governments accusing Moscow of stepping up a "hybrid war" on the continent through acts including sabotage and arson.
Russia denies that, and rejects repeated statements by Western politicians that it is gearing up for a possible military attack on a NATO country. Putin warned that cycles of escalation in international conflict could quickly lead to dangerous scenarios.
"We must realise that the moment when nothing can be changed any longer may come very quickly and unexpectedly for everyone. The logic of escalating, increasingly harsh retaliatory measures leads to a fatal point of no return," he said.
"At the heart of this escalation lie arrogance and overconfidence. This is a path to the brink of the abyss. All the more so today, when the arsenals of the world’s leading powers contain weapons capable of destroying all life or, at the very least, reducing the Earth to a catastrophic state," Putin said.
"Can we be certain that these weapons will never be used? Well, of course not. We must bear this in mind and avoid such an outcome," he added.
Putin, who said he was ready for a trilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and United States President Donald Trump if a proper agenda was worked out first, ruled out the idea of stopping Russian strikes on Ukrainian targets in the Black Sea area, while conceding that Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries across Russia had cost Russia 1 per cent of its gross domestic product. But while he cast Western help to Kyiv when it came to launching deep strikes inside Russia as a future threat, he said Moscow was not planning to attack arms factories in Europe which supplied Ukraine "tomorrow".
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