‘Russia ready for nuclear war over Ukraine’, says Vladimir Putin
Live MintRussian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday warned the West that Moscow was technically ready for nuclear war. Responding to a question whether the country was ready for a nuclear war, Putin told the Rossiya-1 television and news agency RIA said, “From a military-technical point of view, we are, of course, ready.” The United States understood that if it deployed American troops on Russian territory - or to Ukraine - Russia would treat the move as an intervention, he said, adding that, “there are enough specialists in the field of Russian-American relations and the field of strategic restraint.” “Therefore, I don't think that here everything is rushing to it, but we are ready for this,” he added. Putin's nuclear warning came alongside another offer for talks on Ukraine as part of a new post-Cold War demarcation of European security. The war in Ukraine has triggered the deepest crisis in Russia's relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and Putin has warned several times the West risks provoking a nuclear war if it sends troops to fight in Ukraine. Putin has sent a series of public nuclear warnings to the US aimed at discouraging greater involvement in Ukraine - a move the Kremlin says would mark a slide into world war.