President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said Friday that even the combined arsenals of Europe and the United States would be no match for Russia’s in a nuclear confrontation, but that “I hope this never happens.”
He reasoned that Moscow’s supremacy in the Ukraine war made that grim scenario unlikely.
“Use is possible in an exceptional case: in case of a threat to the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Putin told a large audience of Russian elite and foreign dignitaries gathered for the main session of the four. day of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “I don’t think there’s ever been a case like that.”
As Putin spoke, President Biden was in Europe to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, ultimately leading to the defeat of Nazi Germany. The Russian attack on Ukraine meant the stakes were high today, Biden said, suggesting that the voices of the fallen “are calling us” to defend Western values.
At the annual meeting in St. Petersburg, Putin invariably presents a long and enthusiastic assessment of Russia’s internal and external affairs, and this year was no exception. The country’s economy was growing despite a series of Western sanctions, he said, and Russia was fostering an alternative to the U.S.-dominated global financial order as Moscow’s military prevailed on the battlefield.
“Mr. Putin is a great master at selling optimism, and this is quite a strategy: today in Russia, optimism is the official religion and the obligatory state ideology,” said Kirill Rogov, a former Russian government adviser who now directs Re: Russia, a Vienna-based policy research organization Many of the positive economic indicators are driven by huge government spending on defense industries, he noted.
Given the large foreign presence at the forum, Putin often uses a more measured tone than when addressing a strictly domestic audience. The hardline moderator, Sergei Karaganov, a prominent political scientist, repeatedly pressed Putin to accept that the nuclear option was the best way to win the war, that Russia should point “a nuclear gun at the temple” of the West.
In 1993, Russia abandoned a Soviet pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons, fearing that its weakened military forces would not be able to deter an American attack, however unlikely. While he noted that Russia’s nuclear doctrine could change, Putin brushed aside Karaganov’s comment.
“We don’t have that need,” he said of using nuclear weapons as a last resort to preserve national sovereignty. “Because our armed forces are not only gaining experience, they are increasing their effectiveness.”
Putin suggested that saber rattling was counterproductive, although Western countries accused him of doing just that in 2022, when the tide was turning against Russia in the war and again, recently, after the United States allowed Ukraine to use American weapons against the military. . objectives in Russia. “I would like to ask everyone not to talk about the possibility of using nuclear weapons in vain,” he said.
When Karaganov asked the president if a negotiated agreement was possible even with what the moderator called unreliable interlocutors like the West and Ukraine, Putin cited Stalin and said that sometimes there was no alternative. Putin also repeated the idea that Ukraine’s government was illegitimate because President Volodymyr Zelensky’s five-year term had expired and new elections were postponed in the middle of the war.
Putin also suggested that any peace treaty would have to be negotiated along the lines of previous agreements in Minsk and Istanbul. Neither of them managed to avoid the conflict.
While Zelensky participated in the D-Day commemoration on Friday, Russia was not invited, despite its pivotal role as an ally in World War II. Some Russian commentators were offended. Olga Skabeeva, a prominent Russian propagandist on state television, mocked Biden in a post on the messaging app Telegram, saying she “went into a trance and contacted the souls of dead World War II veterans.” ”.
Others, however, pointed out how the changes at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum showed the extent to which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 had isolated the country. That has made the Kremlin desperate to find allies, including Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, once ostracized by Moscow as a terrorist organization. China and India, both major buyers of Russian oil, did not send high-level delegations.
“Once called ‘Russia’s Davos’ and attended by democratically elected presidents and CEOs of large global corporations, this year’s guest list looks distinctly more war criminal,” wrote the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, published outside Russia. , in a summary of the conference. events.
One of the few frissons of excitement at this year’s forum was the first-time appearance of Putin’s two adult daughters on panel discussions, which have always featured a who’s who of Russia’s elite.
The two women use different surnames, and the president has repeatedly refused to publicly acknowledge that Maria Vorontsova, 39, and Katerina Tikhonova, 37, were his daughters, even as they both took on prominent roles in public institutions.
Tikhonova, who first entered the public spotlight years ago through international rock ‘n’ roll acrobatic dance competitions, spoke remotely to a panel Thursday about the effort to substitute imported Russian products, long a pet project of Putin. Her sister, Mrs. Vorontsova, addressed the use of innovation in biotechnology on Friday. Neither was identified as a descendant of Putin.
Milana Mazaeva and Alina Lobzina contributed reporting.