Putin hopes Ukraine will abandon nuclear weapons

Putin hopes Ukraine will abandon nuclear weapons

President Vladimir Putin said in remarks released Sunday that Russia has sufficient strength and resources to... War in Ukraine to a logical end. However, he hoped that the use of nuclear weapons would not be necessary.

The war in Ukraine and its consequences

Putin ordered the deployment of thousands in February 2022 Russian troops to Ukraine. This led to the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II and the most serious confrontation between Moscow and the West since the deepest phase of the Cold War.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have died or been injured. The US President Donald Trump has repeatedly stressed that he wants to end the “bloodbath” that his administration portrays as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

Nuclear escalation and Putin's perspective

In a state television film chronicling Putin's 25-year reign as Russia's supreme leader, he was asked by a reporter about the risk of nuclear escalation in the Ukraine war. “They wanted to provoke us to make mistakes,” Putin said, speaking next to a portrait of Tsar Alexander III, a 19th-century conservative leader who suppressed dissent. “There has been no need to use these weapons… and I hope they will not become necessary.”

“We have enough strength and resources to bring what was started in 2022 to a logically necessary result.” Trump has indicated in recent weeks that he is frustrated by the lack of an agreement between Moscow and Kiev. The Kremlin, on the other hand, maintains that the conflict is so complicated that the rapid progress Washington wants is difficult to achieve.

Putin's view of the West

Former U.S. President Joe Biden, Western European leaders and Ukraine portray the invasion as an imperialist land grab and have repeatedly pledged to defeat Russian forces that control about a fifth of Ukraine.

Putin, however, sees the war as a turning point in Moscow's relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 by expanding NATO and encroaching on what he sees as Russia's sphere of influence.

Trump warned that the conflict could develop into a third world war. Former CIA Director William Burns stated that by the end of 2022 there was a real risk that Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, a claim rejected by Moscow.

Putin's rule and public perception

Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who took over the presidency from an ailing Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, is the longest-reigning Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin, who was in power for 29 years until his death in 1953.

Russian dissidents - most of whom are now either in prison or abroad - see Putin as a dictator who has built a fragile system of personal rule based on sycophancy and corruption that is leading Russia toward decline and unrest.

But his supporters, who have an approval rating of over 85% according to Russian polls, see Putin as a savior who stood up to an arrogant West and ended the chaos that accompanied the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Private information about the president's life

The carefully staged state television film, which gave viewers a rare glimpse into the Russian president's notoriously closed life, showed Putin offering chocolates and a fermented milk drink to Pavel Zarubin, a top Kremlin correspondent, in his private Kremlin kitchen.

Putin recalled first falling to his knees in prayer during the North-East crisis at the Moscow Theater in 2002, when Chechen militants took over 900 people hostage. More than 130 hostages died in this crisis.

“I don’t feel like any politician,” Putin said of his 25 years in power as president and prime minister. "I breathe the same air as millions of Russian citizens. This is very important. God willing, it should stay that way for as long as possible. And it should not disappear."