Vladimir Putin’s nuclear menace is “real and not just words”, a Russian opposition politician warned. Grigory Yavlinsky has been a longtime critic of the Russian president’s regime.

He asserted that Russia might use it is nuclear capabilities in opposition to Ukraine in the event that they have been to attempt to recapture Crimea, saying as per Newsweek, “I think that [Putin’s] nuclear threat is a real threat. That kind of weapon is such a serious thing…this is not [just] words, this is a real factor, which you have to take into consideration in the current situation. That’s it.”

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Vladimir Putin has earlier claimed- a number of times- that Russia is able to use nuclear weapons amid Ukraine invasion as Moscow needed to “take into account” the weapons possessed by the United States together with its NATO allies.

“In today’s conditions, when all the leading NATO countries have declared their main goal to inflict a strategic defeat on us, to make our people suffer… how can we not take into account their nuclear capabilities? Moreover, they supply weapons to Ukraine worth tens of billions of dollars,” Vladimir Putin stated.

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The Russian president added that the West’s “one goal” was to “disband the former Soviet Union” and its “fundamental part” of the Russian Federation.