MOSCOW (Reuters) – A senior Russian lawmaker on Thursday said that Ukrainian strikes on Russia with Western missiles would lead to global war with the use of nuclear weapons and that Moscow’s response would be tough with more powerful weapons.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s Duma, the lower house of parliament, said that if the West gave permission for such strikes deep into Russian territory then it would lead to a “global war with the use of nuclear weapons.”
“Russia will give a tough response using more powerful weapons,” said Volodin, an ally of President Vladimir Putin who often gives insights into thinking at the top levels of the Kremlin.
He was responding to a European Parliament vote in favour of letting Kyiv hit Russian targets with Western weapons.
Volodin said it appeared to Moscow that the West had forgotten the vast sacrifices made by the Soviet Union in World War Two.
He said Europeans should understand that it would take Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, known as Satan II by some, just 3 minutes and 20 seconds to strike Strasbourg.
The Ukraine war has triggered the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis – which is considered to be the time when the two Cold War superpowers came closest to intentional nuclear war.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)