WILD WEST SHOW
Vlad rant vs. US & allies
A defiant Vladimir Putin railed at the US and its allies Thursday, accusing them of playing a “dangerous, bloody and dirty” game of global domination — and denied that Russia has ever considered using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Speaking at a conference of international foreign-policy experts in Moscow, Putin said it was unnecessary for Russia to strike Ukraine with atomic weapons.
“We see no need for that,” Putin said. “There is no point in that, neither political, nor military.”
Putin said an earlier warning of his readiness to use “all means available to protect Russia” didn’t amount to nuclear saber-rattling but was merely a response to statements made by Western leaders — specifically nowformer British Prime Minister Liz Truss — about their possible use.
“What were we supposed to think?” Putin said. “We saw that as a coordinated position, an attempt to blackmail us.”
He said Russia’s military doctrine was defensive in comments that came a day after his country’s military carried out drills simulating a retaliatory nuclear strike.
In one of his longest public addresses since the invasion of Ukraine — clocking in at more than three hours — a seemingly relaxed and confident Putin warned that the world was at a “historic frontier.”
“Ahead is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, important decade since the end of World War II,” the Kremlin leader said.
As he has done many times in the past, the 70-year-old president also accused Russia’s Western foes of undermining “traditional values” and imposing a decadent culture with “dozens of genders [and] gay parades” on other countries.
Turning his attention to Ukraine during the question-andanswer session, Putin paradoxically claimed that only Russia can guarantee its neighbor’s territorial integrity.
He painted the ongoing conflict as a “civil war,” invoking his longheld belief that Russia and Ukraine are part of a single people, and that Ukraine is an “artificial state” — an idea Kyiv vehemently rejects.
Putin also repeated the unsubstantiated claim that Ukraine could denotate a “dirty bomb” as part of a “false flag” attack intended to cast blame on Russia and further isolate it on the global stage.