Putin also confirmed for the first time that tactical nuclear weapons had already been deployed to close ally Belarus, in a reminder to the West that it could not inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.
He stressed that he saw no need for Russia to resort to nuclear weapons for now.
“As you know we were negotiating with our ally, (Belarusian President (Alexander) Lukashenko, that we would move a part of these tactical nuclear weapons to the territory of Belarus – this has happened,” said Putin.
“The first nuclear warheads were delivered to the territory of Belarus. But only the first ones, the first part. But we will do this job completely by the end of the summer or by the end of the year.”
The move, Moscow’s first deployment of such warheads – shorter-range nuclear weapons that could potentially be used on the battlefield – outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union was intended as a warning to the West about arming and supporting Ukraine, the Russian leader said.
“…It is precisely as an element of deterrence so that all those who are thinking about inflicting a strategic defeat on us are not oblivious to this circumstance,” said Putin, using a diplomatic term for a defeat so severe that Russian power would be diminished on the world stage for decades.
Lukashenko, a staunch ally of Putin, said late on Tuesday his country had started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons that included some three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Japan in 1945.
The Russian leader announced in March he had agreed to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, pointing to the US deployment of such weapons in a host of European countries over many decades.
Ukraine would soon run out of its own military equipment, making it totally reliant on hardware supplied by the West, undermining its ability to fight for long, Putin said.
Recalling his stated objectives at the start of the war to “demilitarise” and “denazify” Ukraine, Putin said:
“As for demilitarisation, soon Ukraine will stop using its own equipment altogether. There’s nothing left. Everything on which they fight and everything that they use is brought in from the outside. Well, you can’t fight like that for long.”
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