MOSCOW: There is a rising tendency in the world to underestimate the threat of nuclear war, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday.
“This tendency is taking place and even growing,” Putin told reporters in Moscow. Nuclear war “can lead to the death of all civilisation and possibly even the planet itself.”
The danger is “somehow being obscured, receding. It seems impossible or not so important,” Putin said at his year-end press conference, for which a record 1,700 journalists were accredited.
For decades the US and the Soviet Union faced off amid a continual threat of nuclear war, eventually curbed by two major deals restricting such weapons: the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
The US has already scuttled the first treaty and now wants to withdraw from the second as relations with Russia have plummeted in recent years with the nations supporting opposing sides in conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.
“We are currently observing the collapse of the international system for containing weapons,” Putin said.
“It’s rather difficult to imagine how the situation will develop” as the US exits from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Putin said. “If such missiles appear in Europe, what should we do? We’ll need to ensure our security.” — dpa
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