Lavrov invokes nuclear capacity in U.N. speech full of bile towards the West

Russian diplomat warns against fighting nuclear power, criticizes Western involvement in Ukraine, escalating tensions at U.N. General Assembly.

Russia's top diplomat warned Saturday (September 28, 2024) against “trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power,” delivering a U.N. General Assembly speech packed with condemnations of what Russia sees as Western machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere — including inside the United Nations itself.

Three days after Russian President Vladimir Putin aired a shift in his country’s nuclear doctrine, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the West of using Ukraine — which Russia invaded in February 2022 — as a tool to try “to defeat" Moscow strategically.

“I’m not going to talk about the senselessness and the danger of the very idea of trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power, which is what Russia is,” he said.

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The spectre of nuclear threats and confrontation has hung over the war in Ukraine since its start. Shortly before the invasion, Putin reminded the world that his country was “ one of the most powerful nuclear states,” and he put its nuclear forces on high alert shortly after. His nuclear rhetoric has ramped up and toned down at various points since.

On Wednesday (September 25, 2024), Mr. Putin said that if attacked by any country supported by a nuclear-armed nation, Russia will consider that a joint attack.

He didn’t specify whether that would bring a nuclear response but he stressed that Russia could use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional assault that posed a “critical threat to our sovereignty.”