President Vladimir Putin of Russia took a less strident tone on the possibility of nuclear war in an interview released Wednesday, an apparent attempt to bolster his domestic image as a guarantor of stability before the Russian presidential election this weekend.
In a lengthy interview released by Russian state television, Putin struck a softer tone than in his state-of-the-nation address last month, when he said that the West risked causing the "destruction of civilization” if it intervened more directly in Ukraine. In the interview, Putin described the United States as seeking to avoid such a conflict, even as he warned that Russia was prepared to use nuclear weapons if its "sovereignty and independence” were threatened.
"I don’t think that everything is rushing head-on here,” Putin said when asked whether Washington and Moscow were headed for a showdown. He added that even though the United States was modernizing its nuclear force, "this doesn’t mean, in my view, that they are ready to start this nuclear war tomorrow.”