Sergei Lavrov accuses west of using Ukraine ‘to defeat’ Russia days after Putin shifts Moscow’s nuclear posture

Sergei Lavrov accuses west of using Ukraine ‘to defeat’ Russia days after Putin shifts Moscow’s nuclear posture

Russia’s top diplomat warned on Saturday against “trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power”, delivering a UN general assembly speech packed with condemnations of what Russia sees as western machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere – including inside the United Nations itself.

Three days after Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, aired a shift in his country’s nuclear doctrine, his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, accused the west of using Ukraine – which Russia invaded in February 2022 – as a tool to try “to defeat” Moscow strategically, and “preparing Europe for it to also throw itself into this suicidal escapade”.

“I’m not going to talk here about the senselessness and the danger of the very idea of trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power, which is what Russia is,” he said.

  • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.worldEnglish
    191·
    6 hours ago

    I’m sure they have a lot of nukes but how many have been stripped for parts (by them or for the black market or by spies)? I’m not saying they have zero or that their stockpile isn’t 2nd or 3rd in the world. But the more they mention them, the more I wonder why.

    • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      3 hours ago

      It’s less being stripped, and more a lack of maintenance. Nukes have a shelf life. The elements inside then can decay, this means they need replacing. This is a highly specialist job. It’s also expensive, and can only really be cross checked by the same people who do the work (or detonating it).

      • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 hours ago

        Uranium isn’t subject to export sanctions because the United States buys a lot from Russia and France gets all theirs from the Sahel region Russia is somehow making worse than a European colony.

        I’m pretty sure they have fissile material. I’m not sure they have copper wiring left. It’d be small time theft.

    • stupidcasey@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 hours ago

      More than any other country on earth, and the only thing of value is the core, so probably not many have been stripped.

  • eran_morad@lemmy.worldEnglish
    521·
    9 hours ago

    Notice how china and the USA never bother waving their nuclear dicks in the air. Fucking Pakistan doesn’t bother with that shit. The blyats, on the other hand, have promised nuclear war how many times, now?

    These fucking idiot blyats can’t take a lesson from history. TF they think is gonna happen, Ukraine is just going to roll over? It’s going to be a long, bloody war of attrition, and in the end, the defenders always win.

    • InverseParallax@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      7 hours ago

      Two things here:

      1. If this is true, and we cave and let them take this, why on earth would they not demand more? It seems like they would have to, especially considering they have to make up for all they spent so far on Ukraine. We open the door to infinite nuclear blackmail, which we didn’t touch even in the worst of the cold War, and modern Russia is nowhere near as powerful as the ussr was. North Korea, otoh, will demand Seoul surrender tomorrow.

      2. If they’re really concerned, they are always free to leave. Nobody is keeping them in Ukraine at gunpoint.

      • stupidcasey@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        5 hours ago

        All that means is they are getting desperate, the worst possible state for a nuclear power to be in.

        • InverseParallax@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          4 hours ago

          Again, then they should clearly just leave.

          Never mind, that assumes they’re not a mentally handicapped nuclear power…

          Most of their technology, including their nuclear technology, was produced in the ussr by Ukrainians…

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
      92·
      8 hours ago

      So, y’all remember that twitter profile “Shit My Dad Says”?

      One of them was “when people start talking about sick size, don’t whip out a ruler; keep your mouth shut, stuff your crotch and keep your pants on.”

      (Or something like that.)

      The more they insist that their nukes … whelp. The more we think we should let them whip one out.

      • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        4·
        7 hours ago

        Another such wise man once told me that prefacing a joke with “Oh, man, this is hilarious” is not unlike telling people you’re a sexual teeranna’soris. 🤌🏽

  • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    241·
    8 hours ago

    a nuclear power, which is what Russia is

    if you have to clarify like that, buddy, I have some bad news for you

  • robocall@lemmy.worldEnglish
    261·
    9 hours ago

    The more that Russia threatens nuclear war, the less I believe they are going to do it.

  • AlphaOmega@lemmy.worldEnglish
    111·
    8 hours ago

    Remember when Gorbachev said he would bury us?

    Well he’s dead, I’m alive and my fear of Russia using nukes is non existent after hearing them drone on about it for literal decades.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      6 hours ago

      Krushchev, and the idiom was a bit lost in translation. As I understand, the meaning was closer to “We will outlast you.”

      Not that that worked out either, but it’s less aggressive and more defiant.

    • kent_ehEnglish
      31·
      6 hours ago

      Gorbachev said he would bury us?

      I don’t subscribe to that point of view.

      It would be such an ignorant thing to do, if the Russians love their children too.

  • TipRing@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    8 hours ago

    If nuclear extortion is permitted to work, it will inspire proliferation like we have never seen before.