By Guy Faulconbridge and Felix Light
MOSCOW (Portal) – Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, an ally of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, on Thursday warned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that Russia’s defeat in Ukraine could trigger a nuclear war.
“The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war can trigger a nuclear war,” Medvedev, who is deputy chair of Putin’s powerful Security Council, said in a post on Telegram.
“Nuclear powers have never lost major conflicts on which their fate depends,” said Medvedev, who was president from 2008 to 2012.
Medvedev said NATO and other defense leaders, who are scheduled to meet Friday at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany to discuss strategy and support for the West’s attempt to defeat Russia in Ukraine, should discuss the risks of their policies think.
Russia and the United States, by far the largest nuclear powers, own about 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads. Putin is the ultimate decision maker on the use of nuclear weapons.
While NATO is conventionally superior to Russia militarily, Russia has nuclear superiority over the Alliance in Europe when it comes to nuclear weapons.
Calling Russia’s “military special operation” in Ukraine an existential struggle with an aggressive and arrogant West, Putin said Russia will use all available means to protect itself and its people against any attacker.
WAR
Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine sparked one of the deadliest European conflicts since World War II and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
The United States and its allies have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an imperial land grab, while Ukraine has vowed to fight until the last Russian soldier is driven from its territory.
Since a somber New Year’s Eve message calling the West Russia’s real enemy in the war against Ukraine, Putin has repeatedly signaled that Russia will not back down. He has sent hypersonic missiles into the Atlantic and appointed his top general to wage the war.
The story goes on
Putin on Wednesday said Russia’s powerful military-industrial complex is ramping up production and is one of the main reasons his country will prevail in Ukraine.
Russia’s nuclear doctrine allows a nuclear strike after “an aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the existence of the state is threatened”.
Washington has not detailed what it would do if Putin ordered the first use of nuclear weapons in a war since the United States unleashed the first atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Medvedev, 57, who once presented himself as a reformer willing to work with the United States to liberalize Russia, has re-emerged as the most publicly combative member of Putin’s circle since the war.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Medvedev has repeatedly voiced the threat of nuclear chaos and used insults to describe the West.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, Russia has 5,977 nuclear warheads, while the United States has 5,428, China 350, France 290, and the United Kingdom 225.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow and Felix Light in Tbilisi; Editing by Nick Macfie)