Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a series of new threats, suggesting he could provide weapons to countries to attack Western targets, waving his nuclear saber once again.
His warning – a response to the decision by the United States and its European allies to allow Ukraine to attack some Russian territory using its weapons – was the Kremlin’s latest threat against further support for kyiv.
The Russian leader also insisted that Washington and its partners were wrong to assume that he would never use nuclear weapons.
In response, President Joe Biden said Thursday that Putin was “a dictator” who had “worried me for 40 years” and was struggling to balance domestic pressures with the demands of his military campaign.
But Biden also emphasized that the United States was not allowing Ukraine to use American weapons to strike deep inside Russia and target Moscow or the Kremlin itself.
The Russian leader’s latest threats came Wednesday at a briefing with the heads of international news agencies at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
He was asked about last week’s decision to ease restrictions on kyiv following Moscow’s new attack on the Kharkiv border region.
“If someone considers it possible to supply such weapons to a combat zone to attack our territory and create problems for us, then why don’t we have the right to supply our weapons of the same class to those regions of the world from where they attack? Will it be carried out? about sensitive objects of those countries that do this in relation to Russia? Putin said.
“That is, the response can be symmetrical. We will think about it.”
It would be his fifth term in office.
“Ultimately, if we see that these countries are being dragged into a war against us, and this is their direct participation in the war against the Russian Federation, then we reserve the right to act similarly,” he said. “But in general, this is the path to very serious problems.”
It was not immediately clear to which “regions of the world” it would deliver those missiles.
On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to name the regions Putin had in mind.
The Russian president said what he wanted to say and delivered a clear message that the supply of weapons to attack inside Russia “cannot go without consequences,” Peskov told reporters at a daily briefing.
Putin warned European NATO states last week that the decision to allow Ukraine to attack inside Russia with its weapons was playing with fire and could precipitate a global conflict.
Ukraine’s allies had been reluctant to allow their weapons to be used inside Russia until now for fear of retaliation from Moscow. But the Kremlin’s new cross-border offensive increased pressure for change, and kyiv felt it had been left at a disadvantage and increasingly frustrated.
Ukraine noted earlier this week that it had carried out the first attack inside Russia using Western weapons, apparently targeting an air defense system in the Belgorod border region.
Russian authorities on Wednesday accused Ukraine of trying to attack the Kremlin with two drones in an attempt to assassinate President Vladimir Putin.
Asked what could trigger a nuclear war and how close the world was to that risk, Putin said Russia is often accused of waving a “nuclear baton” but he was not the one who raised the issue.
But, he added, Russia can use “all means at our disposal” in the event of a threat to its sovereignty and territorial integrity in accordance with the country’s nuclear doctrine, a framework that establishes the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons.
“For some reason, the West believes that Russia will never use it,” Putin said.
“This cannot be taken lightly, superficially,” he added.
Putin has been threatening to unleash Russia’s powerful nuclear arsenal since it became clear that kyiv’s Western allies would not abandon the war-torn nation and would provide it with battlefield weaponry, ultimately prolonging what Putin thought would It would be a quick operation.
Asked about Putin’s latest comments in an interview in Normandy, France, Biden said the Russian leader had “worried me for 40 years.”
“He’s not a decent man. He’s a dictator,” Biden told ABC News on Thursday, “and he’s fighting to make sure he keeps his country together while continuing this attack.”
Biden added that “we are not talking about giving them weapons to attack Moscow, to attack the Kremlin,” but only about letting Ukraine attack “just across the border, where they are taking significant fire from conventional weapons used by the Russians to get in”.
While Ukraine has been forced to wait for new supplies of American weapons, it has managed to slow the Russian advance and stall the northeastern ground offensive.
kyiv is now pressing its allies to further loosen restrictions on the use of its weapons so it can strike deeper into enemy territory.
Biden will meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in France this week as the West marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
In a speech at the American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer to mark the anniversary of D-Day, Biden drew a direct parallel between that Allied fight against Nazi Germany and Ukraine’s fight against Russia.
“The fight between dictatorship and freedom is endless. Here in Europe we see a clear example. “Ukraine has been invaded by a tyrant bent on dominance,” he stated. “We cannot allow what happened here to be lost in the silence of the years to come. We must remember it, honor it and live it.”
“Democracy is never guaranteed,” he added.
This article was originally published on NBC News. Click here.
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