Sergei Lavrov accuses west of using Ukraine ‘to defeat’ Russia days after Putin shifts Moscow’s nuclear posture
Russia’s top diplomat warned on Saturday against “trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power”, delivering a UN general assembly speech packed with condemnations of what Russia sees as western machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere – including inside the United Nations itself.
Three days after Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, aired a shift in his country’s nuclear doctrine, his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, accused the west of using Ukraine – which Russia invaded in February 2022 – as a tool to try “to defeat” Moscow strategically, and “preparing Europe for it to also throw itself into this suicidal escapade”.
“I’m not going to talk here about the senselessness and the danger of the very idea of trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power, which is what Russia is,” he said.
Two things here:
If this is true, and we cave and let them take this, why on earth would they not demand more? It seems like they would have to, especially considering they have to make up for all they spent so far on Ukraine. We open the door to infinite nuclear blackmail, which we didn’t touch even in the worst of the cold War, and modern Russia is nowhere near as powerful as the ussr was. North Korea, otoh, will demand Seoul surrender tomorrow.
If they’re really concerned, they are always free to leave. Nobody is keeping them in Ukraine at gunpoint.
All that means is they are getting desperate, the worst possible state for a nuclear power to be in.
Again, then they should clearly just leave.
Never mind, that assumes they’re not a mentally handicapped nuclear power…
Most of their technology, including their nuclear technology, was produced in the ussr by Ukrainians…
They’re not as desperate as you think. Putin has grandchildren and legacies are generally important for dictators.