Putin just made one of his most explicit threats of nuclear war yet

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual state of the nation address at the Gostiny Dvor conference centre in central Moscow on February 29, 2024. ALEXANDER NEMENOV via Getty

• Russia’s Vladimir Putin menaced the West with the prospect of nuclear war. 
• It came after France’s president suggested NATO troops could be stationed in Ukraine. 
• The Russian president said that the West was risking “the destruction of civilization.”

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin menaced the West with the prospect of a nuclear attack over its support for Ukraine.

Putin made the remarks on Thursday in the opening minutes of his annual state-of-the-nation speech to Russian lawmakers and top officials.

He alluded to a recent suggestion by France’s President Emmanuel Macron that NATO could send troops to Ukraine to support its fight against the Russian invasion.

“(Western nations) must realize that we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory. All this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and the destruction of civilization. Don’t they get that?” said Putin, according to Reuters.

The remarks are some of the Russian president’s most explicit threats to the West since the Ukraine invasion, in which the US and European countries have provided Ukraine with billions in aid to fight Russia.

But with billions in US aid blocked by Republicans, Russia is making incremental gains against Ukraine, prompting Macron in his remarks last week to call for Europe to intensify its support.

Putin has previously been accused of bluffing in making nuclear threats, suggesting that attacks on the occupied Crimea peninsula would be treated as an attack on Russia itself in 2022 and could prompt a nuclear response.

The peninsula has been targeted several times by Ukraine using missiles and other weapons, and Russia has not launched a nuclear attack in response.

However, leaked Russian military files obtained by The Financial Times and published this week, showed the Kremlin has considered a broad range of scenarios for when the country should go nuclear.

The 29 leaked files pertain to tactical nuclear weapons and are dated from 2008 to 2014, meaning they’re at least 10 years old. They outline conditions for how much of Russia’s military defense system needs to be destroyed to trigger nuclear warfare, per the FT.