Putin says war in Ukraine ‘will take a while’ and considers using nuclear arsenal

The Russian leader, Vladimir Putininformed this Thursday, 8, that the conflict in Ukraine can extend longer. “With regard to the prolonged nature of the special military operation and its results, of course, it will take a while, perhaps,” he said at a meeting of the Russian Human Rights Council in the Kremlin and did not rule out a new mobilization, but that sees no immediate need to take this action. Despite warning about the growing threat of a nuclear war, as he was willing to fight with all the means at his disposal, he added that he sees the Russian nuclear arsenal as a deterrent and not as a provocation. “As for the idea that Russia would not use such weapons first under any circumstances, that means that she would not be able to be second to use them either, because the possibility of doing that in case of an attack on our territory would be too much. limited,” he said. “As a defense, we do consider weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, everything is based on the so-called retaliatory strike,” he continued. “That is, when we are hit, we attack in response.”

In his statement, he assured that his country will continue to bomb Ukrainian energy infrastructures, in response to the attacks attributed to Kiev on the annexed peninsula of Crimea. Putin played down Western criticism of the bombings that left millions of Ukrainians without light and heat in the middle of winter. “Yes, we bombed, but who started it?” Putin declared at an award ceremony for soldiers and other personalities in the Kremlin. The Russian president blames Ukraine for the explosion that damaged the Crimean bridge in early October. He also accused the authorities of the former Soviet republic of having “blown up the power lines of the nuclear power plant in Kursk”, a Russian region on the border with Ukraine, and of “not supplying water” to the pro-Russian separatist stronghold of Donetsk ( east).

*With information from AFP