Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow was already engaged in a nuclear arms race with major world powers, including the United States.
Asked if Russia would be ready to test a nuclear weapon if the US did, Putin said that some countries were considering tests of such weapons, and that Russia would be ready to conduct a test as well if others did.
He also walked back statements made by some of his ministers earlier this week that the Kremlin believed that the sudden push for a US-brokered ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine had been exhausted.
Putin walks back Russian statements on US-Russian relations
“We didn’t fully disclose what was discussed in Anchorage. We continue to operate based on those talks and have made no changes on our part,” Putin said, adding that Moscow and Washington “could still accomplish a lot more."
Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stated that there were "cracks" that were shaking relations between Moscow and Washington
“We have a kind of building of relations that has started to crack and is now collapsing. The Americans are to blame for this. The cracks have now reached the foundation,” Ryabkov stated, as reported by Russian state media.
However, he stated that Russia would bolster its air defences if the US gave Ukraine Tomahawk missiles, which Trump has not fully ruled out.
Putin said such a step would require the direct involvement of US military personnel, destroy bilateral relations, and usher in a new stage of escalation.
He added that Russia is developing new weapons of deterrence, meaning that if the US did not want to voluntarily extend a key arms control treaty, it would not be critical for Russia.
The Kremlin chief also said that Moscow supports Trump's Gaza initiative, and that if it succeeded, it would be "nothing short of a historic event”.
“Whether the current US president deserves the Nobel Prize or not, I don’t know. But he is truly doing a lot to resolve complex crises that have dragged on for years, even decades,” he added, as reported by the Moscow Times.
Putin's comments come as large parts of Kyiv were plunged into darkness in the early hours of Friday after Russian drones and missiles struck Ukrainian energy facilities, cutting power and water to homes and halting a key metro link across the Dnipro river.
In the latest mass attack targeting the energy system as winter approaches, electricity was interrupted in nine regions, and over a million households and businesses were temporarily without power across the country.
"They can't demonstrate anything real on the battlefield... so they will attack our energy sector," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv.
Speaking later in his nightly video address, Zelensky said Putin had deliberately launched the overnight attacks when world attention was focused on the "valuable opportunity" to move towards Middle East peace after the ceasefire agreement in Gaza.
"This marks a new record of Russian depravity, to intensify terrorist strikes and target civilian lives at such a moment," he said.
Corinne Baum contributed to this report.