President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday the world was living through a dangerous moment and warned the West not to escalate a standoff over Ukraine by threatening the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which Moscow has made clear it would defend with nuclear weapons if necessary.
Locked in a war in Ukraine which he said Russia had no choice 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 Moscow 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.
“This is inevitable,” he said.
Putin said Russia realised it would be facing “an enemy (NATO) twice our size.”
“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. “But no one else possesses the kind of weapons that Russia has today. That is our competitive advantage.”
