Ex-Russian president issues ‘nuclear catastrophe’ warning
Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia and current deputy chair of the country's Security Council, has issued a reminder of the dangers of nuclear brinkmanship amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
In a lengthy article in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, he summarized his thoughts on how the year 2022 has changed the world order forever.
“The only thing that stops our enemies today is the understanding that Russia will be guided by [the doctrine] on nuclear deterrence. And if there is a real threat, we will act,” Medvedev wrote in the article published on Sunday. In such a grim scenario there will be nobody left to argue about whether that was “a retaliatory strike or a preventive one.”
“Therefore, the Western world is balancing between a burning desire to maximally humiliate, dismember and destroy Russia, on the one hand, and the desire to avoid a nuclear apocalypse, on the other,” he explained.
Until Russia receives the security guarantees it has demanded, the world “will continue to teeter on the brink of World War III and nuclear catastrophe,” Medvedev wrote, noting that Moscow is doing “everything we can to prevent it.”
Is the West ready, through Kiev proxies, to unleash a full-fledged war against us, including a nuclear war?
Russia presented a list of security proposals to the US and NATO last December, including urging the West to impose a ban on Ukraine entering the military bloc, while insisting that NATO should retreat to its borders of 1997.
After the US and NATO flatly refused, saying they would only be interested in limited strategic arms-control talks, it became obvious that Moscow had “no one to talk and nothing to negotiate about” Medvedev argued.
And when in February “Ukrainian junkies announced their desire to revive their nuclear arsenal,” Moscow had no other choice but to act, he claimed.
“Our world has changed, forever. And the main question remains… what kind of future begins today?” he wrote.
“New disarmament agreements are currently unrealistic and unnecessary,” Medvedev reiterated. “The sooner the guarantees of maximum security that suit our country are received, the sooner the situation will normalize.”
Earlier this month, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that Moscow is willing to discuss the subject of security guarantees again, if the West is serious about it, but until then Russia will continue to respond appropriately to any further NATO expansion. Since the conflict in Ukraine erupted in February, the bloc has moved to welcome Sweden and Finland into its ranks, though the expansion has yet to be finalized.
