Vladimir Putin has said Russia will use all weapons at his disposal if it considers it has come under direct attack in its Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.
Addressing the Valdai foreign policy forum, Putin insisted Russia was “not threatening anyone” and merely responding to statements by Western leaders that Moscow was preparing for war in 2029 or 2030.
Throughout this week, Russia has accused Nato of preparing to blockade its territory, which borders Lithuania and Poland, warning that it would even be prepared to use nuclear weapons if the West tried to cut off Kaliningrad from the rest of Russia.
Nato has sought to calm the situation, stressing it is a defensive alliance and urging Moscow to stop its “nuclear threats”.
Western allies have faced a surge in so-called hybrid warfare incidents blamed on Russia, particularly in Poland and the Baltics in recent months.
Last week alone Poland said a Russian helicopter had strayed into its territory adjacent to Kaliningrad and Lithuania said its population felt “constantly threatened” by Russia, in part because of drones entering the nation’s airspace.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday that his country was preparing for further hybrid attacks, “including serious ones”, after a drone armed with explosives was found in August on the tarmac at Leipzig airport close to Ukrainian cargo planes.
In a wide-ranging speech, the Russian leader told his audience he believed that international conflicts were highly likely to continue, but would get better as “Western hegemony” weakened.
Although Putin himself began the full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, he again blamed the West for provoking the invasion, arguing that it had simply been forced to defend itself and take up arms.
He also insisted that Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian economic targets were a direct response to Ukraine’s strikes on Russia’s oil refineries, and on its ships in the Black Sea.
”Now from every direction we’re receiving calls ‘let’s stop’. But they started it,” he said.
Putin admitted Kyiv had “got some results” from its refinery attacks and Russia had lost about 1% of its GDP. Ukraine maintains it began attacking Russian oil infrastructure because it helped the Kremlin finance the war.
Russia has targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure, ramping up attacks every winter since the war on Ukraine started in 2022. Other civilian infrastructure is also regularly hit, and a key bridge in Kyiv was attacked by drones on Thursday.