If nuclear weapons are used in Ukraine, it won’t be Russia that starts it, says Russian president Vladimir Putin – ostensibly seeking to reassure the world while also delivering an arch reminder that he does, after all, have the power to swing the world’s largest nuclear arsenal into action if he chooses.
Putin was speaking to what has been described as “his personal human rights council”, skirting for the moment the convenience of having your own human rights council when the United Nations human rights council, the OHCHR, tends to insist on paying more than lip service to awkward things such as … human rights.
The Russian president also said he thought that the war in Ukraine was becoming a lengthier operation than he had initially thought, but reassured the public that he had no plans for further mobilisation. This last point is a key message for Putin, who will have been concerned at recent internal polling conducted for the Kremlin’s Federal Guard Service (FSO) and leaked to the exiled dissident news website Meduza, that support for the war has fallen to about one in four of the population.
