Vladimir Putin in rant about nuclear weapons warning Russians will 'suffer'

27 February 2023 , 01:00

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Vladimir Putin warned that Western nations would try to break up Russia if they managed to 'defeat' his country (Image: Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Vladimir Putin has accused the West of trying to destroy Russia as he warned he was eyeing up the UK's nuclear capabilities in a new rant.

The war-mongering Russian president made the claim as he defended his recent decision to pull out of a nuclear arms treaty in an interview with state television on Sunday.

Speaking just days after he suspended the nation's participation in the 2010 New START agreement with the United States, Putin said he had to "take into account" the weapons possessed by the United States along with its NATO allies, which includes France and Britain.

He told TV channel Rossiya 1: "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?

Putin said he was eyeing up the nuclear capabilities of Western allies in a new interview (AFP via Getty Images)

"Moreover, they supply weapons to Ukraine worth tens of billions of dollars."

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He added that the West's "one goal" was to "disband the former Soviet Union" and its "fundamental part" of the Russian Federation, before going to claim that they could destroy the Russian people entirely.

Suggesting that Russia would be broken up by foreign powers, he said the West could turn regions such as Moscow and the Urals into their own smaller states if it successfully defeated his nation.

More than a year has now passed since the start of the war in Ukraine (AFP via Getty Images)

It comes after maps released one year into Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine suggested he had failed in practically all of his main objectives.

In 12 months, the biggest achievement by the Russian leader is gaining a land corridor giving him a direct connection to Crimea, which it had already illegally annexed in 2014.

The British Ministry of Defence on Friday said the invasion of 190,000 Russian troops from the north, east and south in February 2022 "didn't go to plan".

In a tweet it said: "358 days after Russia’s D-Day they continue a grinding offensive in the Donbas.

"But at D+358 [Day 358] they’re not where they likely hoped to be in this sector by D+10 [Day 10].

"The campaign has likely failed to meet any of its operational and strategic objectives."

Benedict Tetzlaff-Deas