Putin says Russia ready for nuclear war

Russia remains in a state of combat readiness and is fully ready for a nuclear war, but not "everything is rushing to it" at present, President Vladimir Putin said in remarks published on March 13, Reuters reports.

In an interview with state media, Putin said Russia would be ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty was threatened.

"From a military-technical point of view, we are, of course, ready," Putin told Rossiya-1 television and news agency RIA in response to a question about whether the country was really ready for a nuclear war.

He said the United States understands that if it deploys American troops on Russian territory - or to Ukraine - Russia would treat the move as an intervention.

"(In the United States) there are enough specialists in the field of Russian-American relations and in the field of strategic restraint," Putin said.

"Therefore, I don’t think that here everything is rushing to it (nuclear confrontation), but we are ready for this."

He reiterated that the use of nuclear weapons was spelt out in the Kremlin's nuclear doctrine, its policy setting out the circumstances in which Russia might use its weapons.

"Weapons exist in order to use them," Putin said. "We have our own principles."

If the United States conducted nuclear tests, Russia might do the same, he added in the wide-ranging interview.

"It's not necessary ... we still need to think about it, but I don't rule out that we can do the same."

However, Putin said Russia had never faced a need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, where the conflict has raged since February 2022.

"Why do we need to use weapons of mass destruction? There has never been such a need."

In the interview, Putin also touched on NATO. He said it made no sense for Sweden and Finland to join the alliance.

According to the head of state, the two countries were doing it for "purely political reasons", they "very probably wanted to be members of the Western club, under some kind of umbrella".

"Why would they want to do that? I frankly don't understand," the Russian leader continued.

He also said that Sweden and Finland joining the North Atlantic Alliance was "an absolutely senseless step from the point of view of securing their own national interests".

The Wagner PMC was also mentioned in the interview. The Russian president said that the Ministry of Defence supported the Wagner PMC, but only as a Russian group and not as anything else.

According to him, Wagner first carried out several economic projects in Syria, and then the group moved to other countries in Africa. The Ministry of Defence supported it only as a group from the Russian Federation.

Earlier, Vladimir Putin said that there were no private military companies in the country, "they did not exist and do not exist". According to the Russian leader, the name of the Wagner PMC is only a journalistic one. Legally, there is no such structure. He noted that there was no consensus on the need for such formations as private military companies.

In January, it was reported that former Wagner fighters would join the Russian "African Corps", which is being formed under the auspices of the Russian Defence Ministry. According to Bloomberg, they will be deployed in Burkina Faso, Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic and Niger. The corps will also include recruits. It is noted that it will take over the missions previously carried out by Wagner PMC.