If Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive against Moscow’s invasion captures Russian territory, there would be no alternative to using strategic nuclear weapons, Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev warned on Sunday.
“There would simply be no other way out” of using nuclear weapons if the Ukrainian offensive succeeded in taking Russian territory, Medvedev, former Russian president and current National Security Council deputy chairman, said in a post on social media.
“Just imagine that the NATO-supported ukrobanderovtsy’s offensive turned out successful, and they took away a part of our land: Then we would have to, following the president’s degree of 02.06.2020, use the nuclear weapon,” Medvedev wrote, referring to followers of Stepan Bandera, a nationalist leader who waged a violent campaign for Ukrainian independence in the 1930s and 1940s.
“That’s why our enemies must worship our warriors. They are keeping global nuclear fire from flaring up,” Medvedev said, referring to Russian efforts to stop the Ukrainian offensive.
Medvedev has not been shy in using Russia’s nuclear arsenal to threaten Ukraine and its Western supporters. During Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed coup, Medvedev said the rebellion could lead to a nuclear war.
Before that, Medvedev had said that the war in Ukraine could be “brought to an end within a few days” by doing what “the Americans did in 1945 when they deployed nuclear weapons and bombed two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”