Putin says Ukraine war poses existential threat to ‘Russian people’

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a new interview that Russian people may not survive if Western countries succeed in handing a “strategic defeat” to Moscow in its war in Ukraine.

Putin’s comments to state TV channel Russia 1 followed his decision to suspend Russia’s involvement in the last remaining arms control treaty with the United States.

“In today’s conditions, when all the leading NATO countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?” Putin said, per Reuters.

Putin accused Western countries of seeking to divide Russia in order to take control of the country’s raw materials.

“I do not even know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will be able to survive in the form in which it exists today,” he said.

Putin’s interview followed his address last week, marking the one-year anniversary of his war in Ukraine, in which he accused Western countries of attacking Russia with sanctions, saying twice that their goal is a “strategic defeat” for Russia.

“Western elites aren’t trying to conceal their goals, to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ to Russia,” he said on Tuesday. “They intend to transform the local conflict into a global confrontation.”

Putin has increasingly sought to frame the war, which he started with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as a battle to defend Russia from obliteration, though the U.S. has said it is only seeking an end to the war.

The Russian leader announced last week that he would suspend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which former President Obama signed with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010.

In the new interview, Putin said the suspension of the treaty was to “ensure security, strategic stability” for Russia, The Associated Press reported.