A pundit for a Russian state broadcaster has threatened nuclear war in a television rant.
Former Conservative minister Rory Stewart shared online what he described as a "terrifying glimpse from Russian state TV". The footage shows a monologue from pundit Sergey Mikheev in a panel show on the state-owned Russia 1 channel.
"There is a simple thing we need to tell Europe," said Mikheev. "You will get a nuclear strike if you gather some kind of peacekeeping contingent by NATO or decide to relocate it somewhere and so on and so forth. This is going to be a nuclear war... Brave Poles, there will be nothing left of your Warsaw in 30 seconds. Brave Germans, so to say. Brave Estonians. Brave Baltics."
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Speaking about the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad — which is bordered by Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic Sea — he continued: "By the way, concerning the brave Baltics. I know there are serious problems in Kaliningrad at the border. Maybe it is relevant to establish a corridor to Kaliningrad? A corridor, an overland corridor to Kaliningrad. It seems to me that countries, as we call them, Lithuania and Poland, behave too boldly. Too boldly. And they don't realise yet that we can, in fact, handle them way faster than we can take care of what we started in Ukraine."
Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shared the video and tweeted: "We have no right to ignore what’s said on Russian state TV these days. This unfortunately has all the potential for getting much worse."
And international security expert Maria Avdeeva commented: "When I say that Putin will not stop in Ukraine, I mean exactly that. State Russian TV show in prime time discusses possible nuclear strike on Europe, Russian invasion of Poland and Lithuania and corridor to Kaliningrad, threatens Germany and Baltic states."
Russia president Vladimir Putin put his nuclear arsenal on high alert on February 27, days after the invasion of Ukraine started. His chief spokesman Dmitry Peskow this week refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine. You can read more coverage of Russia's war on Ukraine here.
