Ukrainian President warns world ‘needs to prepare’ over Russian nuclear threat

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy is warning again that the world “needs to prepare” for the possibility of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin ordering the use of nuclear weapons in his country.

Speaking with Ukrainian journalists in Kyiv on Saturday, Zelenskiy said:

We shouldn’t wait for the moment when Russia decides to use nuclear weapons. We must prepare for that. [They] can use any weapon, I’m convinced of it.

Zelenskiy said anti-radiation medicine and air raid shelters would be needed.

The Ukraine leader had warned on Friday, in an interview that aired on CNN , that he believes Putin would not hesitate to turn to tactical nuclear weapons if he felt things were going badly:”We should think not be afraid, not be afraid, but be ready. But that is not a question for Ukraine, not only for Ukraine, but for all the world, I think”.

On Thursday, the CIA director William Burns said that Russia’s poor military performance raised the risk that Putin could deploy a nuclear weapon. He made his remarks in an address at Georgia Tech, reported by The Hill “Given the potential desperation of Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they’ve faced so far militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons”.

Moscow has said it would use a nuclear weapon on Ukraine in the case of an “existential threat” against Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN in a recent interview.

Joe Biden, the US president, is “deeply concerned” about an escalation of the conflict to a point where nuclear weapons become possible, Burns said.