ByREUTERS
Updated:

President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Russia had no choice but to take into account the nuclear capabilities of NATO as the US-led military alliance was seeking the defeat of Russia.

"In today's conditions, when all the leading NATO countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?" Putin told Rossiya 1 state television, according to TASS.

Putin's claims of western sabotage

The West, Putin said, wanted to liquidate Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin makes his annual New Year address to the nation at the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, Russia December 31, 2022.
Russian President Vladimir Putin makes his annual New Year address to the nation at the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, Russia December 31, 2022. (credit: Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin/Reuters)

"They have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part - the Russian Federation," Putin said, according to TASS.

The West, he said, was an indirect accomplice to the "crimes" committed by Ukraine.