END OF DAYS
Russia warns Ukraine invasion will likely end in NUCLEAR WW3 and says ‘we’re all going to die someday’
RUSSIA has warned its invasion of Ukraine is likely to end in a nuclear world war, adding “we’re all going to die someday”.
The latest chilling statement came from Margarita Simonyan, editor of the state-owned broadcaster RT, who is a high-profile mouthpiece for the Kremlin.
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In a broadcast last night it said it was “more probable” that President Vladimir Putin would launch a nuclear strike than allow Russia to lose the war.
Simonyan said: “Either we lose in Ukraine or the Third World War starts. I think World War Three is more realistic, knowing us, knowing our leader.
“The most incredible outcome, that all this will end with a nuclear strike, seems more probable to me than the other course of events.
“This is to my horror on one hand,” she told a panel of experts, “but on the other hand, it is what it is. We will go to heaven, while they will simply croak... We're all going to die someday.”
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Simonyan’s statements comes close on the heels of a number of threats issued in the past 48 hours from fellow propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, Sergei Lavrov, the country's foreign minister and Putin himself.
While those threats have been dismissed by both the US and the UK as mere bluster, fears of an all-out war using nuclear armaments are a realistic possibility as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine falters as it continues to meet fierce opposition.
Concerns over a possible nuclear strike from Russia were also raised after it test-fired its nuclear missile Sarmat 2 last week, with Putin boasting it had the capability of being able to strike anywhere on earth and couldn’t be stopped by existing missile defences.
Lavrov first raised the possibility of launching nuclear weapons during an interview on Russian state TV on Tuesday.
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Responding to a question on whether the current standoff between east and west could be compared to the Cuban missile crisis at the height of the Cold War, he said the situation was even more dangerous.
He explained this was because the weapons involved now were more powerful, the controls on them more lax, and communication between the two sides is non-existent.
Lavrov said: “During the Cuban Missile Crisis there were not many ‘written’ rules. But the rules of conduct were clear enough.
“Moscow understood how Washington was behaving. Washington understood how Moscow was behaving. Now there are few rules left.”
When asked about the threat of nuclear war, he added: “The risks are very significant. I do not want the danger to be artificially inflated [but] it is serious, real. It cannot be underestimated.”
That was followed by remarks, seemingly made off-the-cuff, by Solovyev while discussing with the head of the Roscomos space agency the deployment of Sarmat 2.
“As it turned out, one Sarmat means minus one Great Britain,” Solovyov said, implying the UK deserved to be obliterated because it has become “totally boorish,” in a possible reference to the UK’s support of Ukraine.
Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Roscosmos space agency, said 46 of the missiles will be constructed with the first deployed to units in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, later this year.
“Everything is according to plan with us,” he said. “It is all according to plan.”
THREAT OF 'LIGHTNING-FAST' RESPONSE
Putin then followed that with a threat of his own, vowing a “lightning-fast” response to any country who directly intervened in the conflict.
During a meeting of lawmakers in St Petersburg he said: “If someone intends to interfere in what is going on from the outside they must know that constitutes an unacceptable strategic threat to Russia.
“They must know that our response to counter strikes will be lightning-fast. Fast.
“We have all the weapons we need for this. No one else can brag about these weapons, and we won’t brag about them. But we will use them.”
While Putin did not directly mention the use of nuclear weapons, it would seem he was making a reference to the Sarmat missile.
His remarks, echo ones he made at the start of the “special military operation” in February when he warned that any country seeking to interfere would face consequences “never seen before in their history”.
It comes as state media has also been playing up the prospect of a world conflict, claiming that Russia was now engaged in a conflict with NATO.
'THEY DECLARED A WAR'
State TV host Olga Skabeeva, said on Tuesday that a summit in Germany involving 40 defence ministers held to coordinate arms deliveries to Ukraine amounted to a declaration of war.
“They declared a war,” she told viewers. “World War III, no longer just a special operation, with 40 countries against us.”
Political scientist Mikhail Markelov, agreed, adding that those 40 countries were “today’s collective Hitler”.
That view was shared by another state media personality Dmitry Kulikov, who said: “This is a big war. The West declared it against us.
“Let’s be worthy of our predecessors, everyone who lived through that. What made us think that our lives should be better than those of our grandparents?
“Why should we be free of our historical mission?”
At the start of the war many experts predicted the conflict would only last a matter of days or weeks, with Russian forces sweeping in to take control and replace the existing Ukrainian government with a regime loyal to Moscow.
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But 62 days later Russia is struggling and having failed to take Kyiv it has refocused its forces in the Donbas region.
So far, Kherson, on the Black Sea coast, is the only major city to fall into Russia’s hands.
Western allies have rallied behind Ukraine with both the US and UK promising to send weapons and arms.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declared earlier this week that Ukraine will be supplied all the weapons it needs to “win” the war and “weaken” Russia.
In a speech last night, UK defence secretary Liz Truss said arms deliveries will “keep going further and faster to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine”.
That would mean not only re-taking the parts of Ukraine Russia has occupied since the invasion but also re-taking the areas attacked and annexed since 2014, namely Crimea and rebel-held areas of Donetsk and Luhansk.
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Ms Truss said the war could last for 10 years, but the West must be ready “for the long haul”.
She warned if Putin was successful in his military objective, then there would be “untold further misery across Europe and terrible consequences across the globe”.
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