Amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s friend, Viktor Medvedchuk, recently predicted that a nuclear strike will “most likely” be coming.
Putin and senior Russian officials have repeatedly threatened nuclear escalation against Kyiv and its Western partners since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
During Putin’s annual state of the nation address last month he warned that Russia’s “strategic nuclear forces are in a state of full readiness.” He also warned that there was a genuine risk of nuclear war if Western nations send troops to Ukraine, as suggested by French President Emmanuel Macron last month.
Western nations, Putin added, “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?”
However, Macron appears to have walked back his previous comments earlier this month about sending troops to Ukraine. During an interview with Czech news publication Novinky.cz. Macron emphasized that France is not actively considering sending military forces to Ukraine.
“In response to one question I was asked about sending troops, I said that nothing is out of the question,” he recalled. “This does not mean that we are considering the possibility of sending French troops to Ukraine in the near future, but we are starting discussions and thinking about everything that can be done to support Ukraine, especially on Ukrainian territory.”
On Friday, according to Russian news agency Tass, pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Medvedchuk who was exiled to Russia in 2022 in exchange for Ukrainian prisoners of war predicted that a nuclear strike will “most likely” be coming as the West continues to “assert its right to global dominance.”
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“If the collective West continues to assert its right to global dominance, Ukraine’s human capital will not be enough in any case…If we continue the policy of war to the bitter end, sooner or later foreign troops will have to be introduced. And most likely, [we will be] looking at a nuclear strike eventually,” he said.
However, Medvedchuk does not rule out that countries outside of Europe could become involved if the conflict expands. “It is clear that the Arab world is being drawn into the war, and after that, China and India will also be involved, as they do not have issues with soldiers.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian defense ministry via email for comment.
This comes as Western leaders including President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg have consistently warned that a direct Russia-NATO confrontation is unthinkable given the nuclear stakes.
However, Putin and the Kremlin have long framed its war on Ukraine as a preemptive war on the “collective West.”
“The West miscalculated and ran into the firm position and determination of our multinational people,” Putin told government officials, members of parliament, and leading civil society figures during his annual speech.
Meanwhile, NATO leaders—particularly on the alliance’s long frontier with Russia—are increasingly warning that direct conflict with Moscow is a realistic danger, suggesting the West has between three and 10 years to prepare for war. However, Putin described such warnings as “nonsense.”
“At the same time they themselves are choosing targets for striking our territory,” the Russian leader said referring to Scholz’s revelation that British and French personnel are helping Ukraine target Russian positions with Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.