Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin has said that Vladimir Putin’s nuclear rhetoric is an “empty threat” and predicted that “Putin’s dictatorship will end in disaster” amid the Ukraine crisis, and the country’s former foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev agrees with Yeltsin.
During an interview with The Economist Ask Podcast. Kozyrev said that Putin’s aggressive rhetoric is just a “blackmail” tactic, and suggested that a coup will end Putin’s reign, according to Yahoo News.
Three weeks ago, Putin sent a shockwave of concern after he put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert following the West’s so-called “unfriendly” economic sanctions following his invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s just a blackmail,” he said of the nuclear threat during an interview with The Economist Ask Podcast.
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Russia is among nine countries that have nuclear weapon capacities. Of the other eight, three are Nato allies – the US, France and the UK – among which there are 5,943 nuclear warheads. Russia is believed to have 4,477 nuclear warheads.
“Those forces which he allegedly ordered… sources are openly saying they don’t see anything like that. It’s an empty threat but he plays this game,” Kozyrev continued. “Those strategic weapons that he ordered on alert [are] suicidal weapons because if he sends a missile to Europe, Nato or the United States, he gets two back and there is no survival for anyone.”
Kozyrev went on to say that Putin’s dictatorship will end “in disaster.”
“It’s already disaster but he just does not realize that,” Kozyrev said before adding that a coup is possible because it is “very much in Russian tradition”.
Read the full report on Yahoo News.
