President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Russia had no choice but to take into account the nuclear capabilities of NATO, as the US-led military alliance was seeking the defeat of Russia. “In today’s conditions, 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?” Putin told Rossiya 1 state television, according to TASS.

The West, Putin said, wanted to liquidate Russia. “They have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part—the Russian Federation,” Putin said. The West, he said, was an indirect accomplice to the “crimes” committed by Ukraine.