Putin: Russia has no plans to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia does not intend to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine despite previous threats he has made that it may turn to them in its war. 

He said at a conference of international foreign policy experts that using nuclear weapons against Ukraine would have no political or military purpose. He also said the West is looking to achieve international domination through the conflict. 

Putin also repeated his previous claims that Russians and Ukrainians are a single people who should be united and tried to delegitimize Ukraine as an independent country. 

Putin has gradually stepped up threats of Russia potentially using tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield against Ukraine to defend Russian territory. 

He has said that he considers Russian territory to include the four regions of Ukraine where Russian soldiers oversaw annexation referendums last month. The referendums in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia passed with more than 90 percent in favor, but the international community has widely denounced the elections as illegal and illegitimate. 

Putin said in his remarks that NATO’s refusal to rule out Ukraine joining the military alliance and Ukraine’s refusal to support a peace agreement with separatists forced the Kremlin to act. 

Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraine in the Donbas region, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk, since 2014. 

Russia also does not have complete control over the regions as Ukraine has retaken thousands of square kilometers of territory as part of a counteroffensive it has conducted over the past two months. 

Russian officials have recently accused Ukraine of intending to launch a so-called dirty bomb, which would spread radioactive material in an explosion, but Ukraine and its Western allies have rejected the claim. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.