Medvedev Issues New Nuclear Warning Amid Ukraine War

‘Clock Is Ticking’

MOSCOW (Newsweek/Sputnik) – Former Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has issued a nuclear-response warning, saying that the “clock is ticking.”

Amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, tensions between NATO countries and the Kremlin have continued, with NATO leaders increasingly warning that direct conflict with Moscow is a realistic possibility. This comes after Putin and senior Russian officials have repeatedly threatened a nuclear escalation in the war against Kyiv and its Western partners.
In a Telegram post, Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council and a former Russian president, suggested that Ukraine is trying to “create a dirty bomb,” adding that they “have all the resources to do this.”
“Considering the seemingly meaningless chatter around the creation of nuclear weapons by...Ukraine, one can only make one sad conclusion: The Nazi regime is trying to create a ‘dirty bomb.’ It has all the resources to do this: raw materials, technology, specialists. And any Soviet-era laboratory will do for making a low-power charge. The clock is ticking,” Medvedev said.
The Kremlin has repeatedly lamented that a “neo-Nazi regime” is in charge of Ukraine.
Medvedev’s remarks come amid reports that restrictions on Kyiv’s use of Western weapons will soon be lifted. Ukraine has pressed hard for the U.S. and the United Kingdom to drop their prohibition against the targeting of Russian territory with American ATACMS missiles and British Storm Shadow cruise missiles. There have been concerns that such use would escalate the conflict.
Newsweek has reached out to Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries via email for comment.
Kyiv says it needs the long-range weapons to target air bases used by Russia’s warplanes that launch glide bombs against Ukraine, often from deep inside Russian territory. Storm Shadow missiles with a range of around 150 miles have been used against Russian targets only in occupied Ukrainian territory.
This is not the first Medvedev has warned of a nuclear response during the war. He previously made headlines for regular social media rants that have ranged from calls for nuclear strikes on NATO members to suggestions that Moscow has no choice but to eliminate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
A Russian diplomat has also expressed hope that there are reasonable politicians in the leadership of NATO who are aware of the destructive consequences that inviting Ukraine into could bring the alliance.
Kiev’s possible accession to NATO in the current conditions will eliminate the possibilities of a political and diplomatic settlement of the Ukraine conflict and make the alliance’s direct involvement in military operations against Russia inevitable, Aleksey Polishchuk, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s second department for the Commonwealth of Independent States’ countries, told Sputnik.
“We constantly warn about the threat of Ukraine’s NATO accession,” Polishchuk said, when asked to comment on Szijjarto’s statement about the possibility of direct Russia-NATO confrontation.
Ukraine’s potential accession to the alliance “will put an end to the possibilities of a political and diplomatic settlement, making it inevitable that the alliance will engage directly in hostilities against Russia, and lead to an uncontrolled escalation,” the official said.