Putin Crony Warns Threatens 'World War Using Nuclear Weapons' Over Europe's Support of Ukraine: ‘No One Should Have Any Illusions’
Sept. 20 2024, Published 2:15 p.m. ET
A close ally of President Vladimir Putin recently issued a stark warning to Western governments, cautioning that any approval for Ukraine to use long-range Western weapons to attack deep within Russian territory could spark a nuclear war.
RadarOnline.com can reveal that Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma and a member of Putin's Security Council, made the statement in response to a recent vote in the European Parliament advocating for EU countries to authorize such actions by Kyiv, according to Reuters.
“What the European Parliament is calling for leads to a world war using nuclear weapons,” Volodin posted on Telegram, titling his message, “For those who didn’t get it the first time.”
This was a pointed reference to Putin's warning last week that allowing Ukraine to launch long-range strikes on Russian soil would bring the West into direct conflict with Moscow.
The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has heightened tensions between Russia and the West to levels not seen since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, widely considered the closest the Cold War superpowers came to a nuclear confrontation.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, in an interview with The Times, noted that Putin had set “many red lines” previously but had not escalated the conflict when they were crossed.
However, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov condemned Stoltenberg’s remarks as both dangerous and provocative.
In a non-binding resolution passed on Sept. 19, the European Parliament called on EU member states to “immediately lift restrictions on the use of Western weapons systems delivered to Ukraine against legitimate military targets on Russian territory.”
Volodin warned that if such actions were taken, Russia would respond decisively with more powerful weapons.
“No one should have any illusions about this,” he wrote, adding that the West seemed to have forgotten the tremendous sacrifices made by the Soviet Union during World War II.
He further emphasized the severity of the threat by highlighting Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, known as Satan II in the West.
Volodin claimed that it would take the missile just three minutes and 20 seconds to reach Strasbourg, the home of the European Parliament.
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