Paris and Washington reacted to the nuclear threat raised by Vladimir Putin during his annual speech to the Nation.
“I listened carefully to what the President of the Russian Federation said this morning.
When we represent a nuclear power, we do not have the right to be irresponsible and to play the escalation game,” Sébastien Lecornu told journalists after a visit to the drone company Delair, near Toulouse.
Vladimir Putin warned the West on Thursday against a "real threat" of nuclear war in the event of an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and the sending of Western military personnel, two days after statements by French President Emmanuel Macron not excluding this hypothesis.
Russia pretends to be the victim
The Russian president “also spoke about the threats coming from the West.
There are no threats weighing on the Russian Federation,” continued the French Minister of the Armed Forces.
“It is a speech which consists of pretending to be the victim and the attacked, while everyone knows very well that Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine and that it is showing a new aggressiveness and playing with the thresholds, including with regard to French interests, he pointed out.
The Russian threat is even stronger today than it was two years ago (…) the context is toughening considerably.
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The United States, for its part, deemed the Russian president's warning “irresponsible”.
“This is not the first time we have witnessed irresponsible rhetoric from Vladimir Putin.
“That’s no way to speak for the leader of a nuclear-armed state,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
The American official recalled that "in the past, we have communicated privately and directly with Russia on the consequences of the use of a nuclear weapon."
“We have no sign that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon,” he added, however.