By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
MOSCOW/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Monday that a direct confrontation between Russia and the U.S.-led NATO military alliance would be “one step away from a full-scale World War III.”
“I think hardly anyone is interested in this,” Putin added in remarks following his re-election as the longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
However, “Everything is possible in the modern world,” Putin stressed.
Putin made the remarks after election authorities claimed he won Sunday’s presidential elections with nearly 88 percent of the vote, the highest voting percentage in Russia’s post-Soviet history.
His warnings came as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered the most profound crisis in Moscow’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world close to nuclear warfare.
Putin previously warned of the risks of nuclear war, but Monday’s words were among his strongest warnings so far.
He referred to French President Emmanuel Macron, who last month said he could not rule out the deployment of ground troops in Ukraine in the future.
And he appeared to confirm Worthy News reports in the early stage of the war that many NATO forces were already in Ukraine.
NATO IN UKRAINE
He said NATO military personnel were present already in Ukraine, as Russia had picked up both English and French being spoken on the battlefield.
“There is nothing good in this, first of all for them, because they are dying there and in large numbers,” he said. A U.S. high-ranking security diplomat Uurevealed to Worthy News in several conversations before and after the war broke out in 2022 that thousands of NATO forces were in and near Ukraine.
While several Western countries have tried to distance themselves from France’s call for (more) ground forces, others, including Poland and others in Eastern Europe, expressed support.
Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, triggering Europe’s worst armed conflict since World War Two.
Putin said he wished Macron would stop seeking to aggravate the fighting in Ukraine and play a role in finding peace: “It seems that France could play a role. All is not lost yet.”
He added: “I’ve been saying it over and over again, and I’ll say it again. We are for peace talks, but not just because the enemy is running out of bullets,” a reference to Ukraine not receiving enough Western military support.
However, he stressed that peace should see “peaceful, good-neighborly relations between the two states in the long term, and not simply take a break for rearmament for 1.5-2 years.”
UN CONCERNS
Yet his comments came while the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the risk of nuclear war was the highest it has been in decades.
“Geopolitical tensions and mistrust have escalated the risk of nuclear warfare to its highest point in decades,” he said during a UN Security Council meeting.
He said the Doomsday Clock – the symbol for humanity’s proximity to self-destruction – “is ticking loudly enough for all to hear.”
Guterres also referred to the Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer, following the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who helped develop the first nuclear weapons during World War II. “Humanity cannot survive a sequel,” the U.N. chief said.
Putin made clear he would continue his presidency by trying to find a “peaceful” solution to the war if possible. He dismissed U.S. and Western criticism of the election, which the White House said was not free and fair.
He countered that U.S. elections were not democratic and criticized the use of “state power” against Donald J. Trump.
“The whole world is laughing at what is happening there,” Putin said of the United States. “It is just a catastrophe – it is not democracy – what on earth is it?”
OPPOSITION LEADER
When asked about the fate of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in unexplained circumstances at a Russian prison in the Arctic on February 16, Putin said he had simply “passed away” using Navalny’s name for one of the first times in public.
Putin said he had agreed several days before Navalny’s death to swap him as part of a prisoner exchange deal that had been approved for Navalny shortly before his death.
“I said: ‘I am agreed’,” Putin said about his approval of the prisoner exchange. “I had one condition – we exchange him, but he never returns.”
Navalny’s widow, Yulia, has accused Putin of killing her husband.
In a video message to protesters in Budapest, Hungary, over the weekend, she also accused Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of being an accomplice in his death by supporting Putin.
The Kremlin has denied that Navalny had been killed. His supporters say he had been jailed in retribution for his campaign against Putin, who had ruled Russia for some 24 years.
Copyright 1999-2026 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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