Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reiterated Monday his country's threat of nuclear war if the West's supply of arms to Ukraine continues.
The warning in an op-ed piece in the state-run newspaper Izvestiya was the second time in three weeks the key aide to President Vladimir Putin has invoked the nuclear option in an effort to deter the U.S.-led NATO alliance from arming Ukraine.
Medvedev, who was president from 2008 to 2012 and currently serves as the deputy chairman of the powerful Security Council of Russia, dangled the prospect of talks while demanding shipments of arms to Ukraine be halted immediately.
Echoing comments by Putin yesterday Medvedev wrote that any existential threat to Russia would not be decided on the front in Ukraine, but would spiral into an existential threat to human civilization, repeating the refrain "we don't need a world without Russia."
"Of course, the pumping in of weapons can continue and prevent any possibility of reviving negotiations," Medvedev said.
"Our enemies are doing just that, not wanting to understand that their goals obviously lead to a total fiasco. Everyone loses. A collapse. Apocalypse. When the former life will have to be forgotten for centuries, until the rubble ceases to emit radiation."
Last week Putin ramped up nuclear tensions by announcing Russia was suspending its participation in the key 2010 New Start treaty -- its last remaining arms control agreement with the United States -- which limits each side's arsenal of intercontinental nuclear weapons.
Russia has reserved the right to use nuclear weapons unilaterally in the face of "aggression" even if its opponents only employ conventional arms.
At the start of the month, Medvedev said any attempt to re-take Crimea would result in the "flaming" of all of Ukraine with all the forces at Russia's disposal, including nuclear weapons "in accordance with our doctrinal documents, including the Fundamentals of Nuclear Deterrence."
"All Ukraine that remains under the rule of Kyiv will burn," Medvedev warned.
According to clause 19 of the Fundamentals of the State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence, Russia may use nuclear weapons "in the event of aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is threatened."
Earlier Monday, a Russian surveillance plane was damaged in a drone attack in neighboring Belarus mounted by a dissident group opposing the pro-Russian government of Alexander Lukashenko.
Aliksandr Azarov, leader of the anti-government group BYPOL, claimed responsibility for the attack on social media.
The Beriev A-50 early warning aircraft was hit by multiple blasts near the Machulishchy airbase near the capital Minsk.
"These were drones. The participants of the operation are Belarusian", Azarov said.
The attack comes as Lukashenko prepares to travel to Beijing tomorrow at the invitation of President Xi Jinping for a three-day state visit.
Medvedev's remarks come after Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday (last week), publicly accused the West of wanting to liquidate Russia, claiming that his people may not survive.
The Russian president said Western countries were seeking to dismantle Russia, and Moscow had no choice but to take Nato’s nuclear capabilities into account.
Putin told state television channel Rossiya 1: ‘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?’
‘They have one goal: To disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part – the Russian Federation,’ Putin said in the interview recorded on Wednesday and broadcast yesterday.
Appealing to nationalist sentiments, Putin said if the West succeeds in destroying Russia, ‘such an ethnic group as the Russian people may not be able to survive in the form in which it exists today’.
‘There will be Muscovites, Uralians and others,’ he said of Russia’s possible fragmentation. He also claimed that the West was an indirect accomplice to the ‘crimes’ committed by Ukraine.
Putin made the remarks while justifying Russia’s suspension of its participation in the New START treaty, which seeks to cap the number of nuclear warheads possessed by the US and Russia.
He said the suspension stemmed from the need to ‘ensure security and stability’ for Russia.
