Medvedev warns that “the defeat of a power can provoke a nuclear war”

First modification: 01/19/2023 – 13:46Last modification: 01/19/2023 – 13:50

They are high caliber words. On his Telegram channel, Dmitri Medvedev, former Russian president and current vice president of the country’s Security Council, mocked the meetings of Western leaders allied with Ukraine and the NATO meeting in Germany scheduled for Friday, January 20.

“Tomorrow, at NATO’s Ramstein base, top military leaders will discuss new tactics and strategies, as well as supplying Ukraine with new heavy weapons and attack systems. And this will be right after the Davos Forum, where belated revelers repeated like a mantra: to achieve peace, Russia must lose,” Medvedev said.

The threat came after the mockery. “And it never occurs to any of those wretches to draw the following basic conclusion from this: the defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war can lead to the outbreak of a nuclear war.”

Later, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, responded at a press conference that Medvedev’s statements do not mean that Moscow is raising the crisis to a new level.

However, he did recall that the former president’s words are “in line” with Russian doctrine, which contemplates an attack with nuclear weapons as a response to an attack with conventional weapons in the event that this “threatens the very existence of the State.”

These words come in the midst of a debate by the Western alliance that supports Ukraine militarily in its war against Moscow: on the one hand, Germany shows a certain reluctance to send offensive weapons, particularly Leopard 2 tanks. On the other, countries like Poland or the United Kingdom they continue to defend at all costs the supply of all types of weapons until the Russian defeat.

These debates, confronted by the Russian side with the most threats, paint what may be the panorama of the second year of war since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022: a year in which both sides seek the definitive victory, increasingly elusive, and they frame the conflict as a battle for and against the Western powers.

Michel: “Ukrainians fight for our European values”

Precisely, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, travels this Thursday, January 19, to kyiv to meet with the Ukrainian President Volodímir Zelenski. In a message on his Twitter account, he recalled that “Ukrainians fight for their land, for the future of their children”, but “they also fight for our common European values ​​of peace and prosperity”.

In addition to meeting Zelensky, Michel will also meet Denys Shymhal, the country’s Prime Minister, and several Ukrainian MPs.

Michel’s visit comes a day before NATO leaders meet at Ramstein, a US military base in western Germany, where the joint strategic support strategy for Ukraine is expected to be discussed. Among the decisions that will be made, the most anticipated will be the German green light or the refusal of the Leopard 2 tanks.

Michel positioned himself last Wednesday in favor of sending these tanks, which would contradict decades of German anti-war policy, at least on European soil. “We will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. The time is now, they urgently need equipment and I am personally in favor of sending tanks to Ukraine,” Michel said.

Units of the Wagner Group close in on Bakhmut

While the leaders of Russia and NATO fill the war with values, the conflict is still alive on Ukrainian soil. After an inspired counteroffensive by kyiv in recent months, Russian troops have not only managed to prevent further Ukrainian advances but have retaken control of some towns.

This Thursday, the head of the Russian Wagner mercenary group, Evgueni Prigozhin, assured that his forces took the town of Klishchiivka, a suburb of Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that has been under Russian siege for months.

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Prigozhin stated, through his press service, that “bitter fighting is still taking place around Klishchiivka” and stressed that Wagner’s fighters are advancing “inch by inch” until they fully control Bakhmut.

The Wagner group, a private military group employed by the Kremlin, was also responsible for taking Soledar on December 11, another of the strategic locations in eastern Ukraine. kyiv has not yet officially recognized the loss of this position.

With EFE and Reuters