Russia has increased the number of nuclear warheads deployed on missiles and bombers to 1,796, a nine-year high, as Vladimir Putin warned that any Nato deployment of troops to Ukraine would mean war with Russia.
The stockpile rose by 78 over the past year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Russia has increased its deployed warheads every year since the war in Ukraine began in 2022.
The United States recorded no increase, while Britain and France did not deploy additional warheads. Their respective totals were 170 and 280.
Speaking at the BRICS summit in New Delhi, Mr Putin said: “Now they [the West] are talking about how they are thinking about bringing troops to the territory of Ukraine. This means war with Russia.”
He denied that Russia posed a threat to Nato countries in Europe, saying Moscow had no plans to invade or threaten existing members of the alliance.
“There is no such threat, and there has never been,” he said. “We are not threatening European countries, nor are we going to threaten them. Why would we?”
He added: “No one seems to even consider that we have no grounds for any conflict with Europe.”
His comments came as former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned that Lithuania could be turned into “scorched earth” and removed from the “world map” if it amended its constitution to allow nuclear weapons to be deployed there.
Mr Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said any such move could trigger a nuclear response from Mr Putin.
“No one will stand up for them. Even if it becomes a scorched earth, no other [Western] countries will go to war for them,” he said.
He also claimed that Nato’s Article 5 mutual-defence provision would not be implemented because doing so would result in a “global catastrophe, planetary”.
His remarks followed further Russian strikes on Ukraine. Sixteen people, including a five-month-old baby, were wounded in Odesa after a cruise missile destroyed the upper floors of a residential high-rise.
One person was confirmed dead and another was missing after a ballistic missile attack on Kryvyi Rih, while a 64-year-old woman and a 37-year-old man were killed in Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine, meanwhile, used drones to attack a Russian air force base and military airfield in Taganrog, setting fires at a facility that services aircraft including the A-50 airborne early warning and control plane.
Ukrainian drones also struck the military-linked KuibyshevAzot chemical plant in Tolyatti, in the Samara region, the second Russian chemical manufacturer attacked in two days.
Britain’s Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Richard Knighton, said Russia’s losses in the war had reached half a million dead and one million wounded. He described the toll as a “senseless and futile waste of human life”.
