Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday his country would carry out a nuclear test if another nuclear power did so. He said Russia had seen signs that “some countries” were preparing to conduct such tests.
Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Group in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Vladimir Putin also responded to US President Donald Trump‘s comments calling Russia a “paper tiger”. He suggested that NATO might be one and warned the United States that if it supplied Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, it would trigger a dangerous new escalation.
Russia’s war in Ukraine, Europe’s deadliest since World War Two, has sparked the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and Russian officials say they are now in a “hot” conflict with the West.
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Putin also reaffirmed his offer to the US to extend their last remaining nuclear arms control pact for one more year after it expires in February. The 2010 New START treaty limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers.
“If they don’t need it, we don’t need it either,” he said, adding that “we feel confident about our nuclear shield.”
While acknowledging that dialogue with the US remained complicated, Putin said one of the factors that should be taken into account in any new arms control talks is the fact that Russia had a new missile, the Oreshnik complex.
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If the US decided that it did not want to do a deal on rolling over the New START treaty, Putin said Russia was confident in its own nuclear shield.
If China signed up to any future nuclear arms control, Putin said he thought the nuclear arsenals of Britain and France should also be taken into account.
Putin vows response as tension with Europe flares
The Russian president also condemned France’s detention of a Russian-linked ship as “piracy”, vowing a “significant” response to what he called European threats as tension flared.
The Russian leader’s warning came after the French Navy on Saturday detained and boarded an oil tanker that has been blacklisted by the European Union for being part of Russia’s sanction-busting “shadow fleet”.
The ship, the Boracay, has been linked to mysterious drone flights over Denmark last month, including military sites, part of a recent spate of drone sightings and airspace violations in European countries blamed on Russia — though Moscow denies responsibility.
The airspace incidents are adding to tension between European nations and Moscow, already riding high over Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(With inputs from Reuters, AFP)
