Putin Ally Vows Nuclear Strike on Washington if Ukraine Wins

A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons on the U.S. if it fails in its invasion of Ukraine.

In a Telegram post on Sunday, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, has claimed the Moscow would use nuclear weapons in the event that “Ukraine with its allies” managed to push Russia out of the war-torn country.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment via email.

“Let’s imagine for a moment that Russia lost and ‘Ukraine with its allies’ won. What for our enemies—the neo-Nazis with their Western sponsors—would be such a victory?” Medvedev wrote, according to a translation posted on X, formerly Twitter, by Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to the Ukrainian Department of Internal Affairs.

He goes on to talk about the “collapse of Russia,” in which he describes a “return to the borders of 1991” when the USSR collapsed following the Cold War. Medvedev said that a Western victory would constitute a complete collapse of Russia, with “tens of millions of victims.” He described it as “the death of our future. The collapse of everything in the world.”

The post continues: “The collapse of Russia will have much more terrible consequences than the results of an ordinary, even the most protracted war. For attempts to return Russia to the borders of 1991 will lead to only one thing. To the global war with the Western countries using all the strategic arsenal of our state.”

He goes on to make nuclear threats against key U.S. and European capital cities. “Against Kyiv, Berlin, London, Washington. Against all other beautiful historical places that have been long ago included in the flight targets of our nuclear triad,” he wrote according to Gerashchenko.

Concluding his message, Medvedev wrote: “Will we have the guts for this if the disappearance of a thousand-year-old country, our great homeland, is at stake, and the sacrifices made by the people of Russia over the centuries will be in vain? The answer is obvious.”

Russia began its invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago on February 24, 2022. Since then, Putin himself and other top Russian officials have threatened to use nuclear weapons as it continues its campaign, both in Ukraine and against NATO member countries.

Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. According to the Federation of American Scientists, Russia possesses 5,889 nuclear warheads, in comparison to the U.S. having 5,244. The U.S. and Russia possess 89 percent of the world’s total inventory of nuclear weapons.