West stops responding to Putin's nuclear blackmail - political scientist Piontkovsky

Political scientist Andrey Piontkovsky said this in an interview with Studio West host Antin Borkovskyi.

"The Kremlin has sensed a change, and the Western mood is very serious. The first such event that has been brewing in recent months is Macron's remarkable statement: when Putin began to threaten him with nuclear weapons, he calmly pointed out that France also has nuclear weapons. The West stopped responding to Putin's nuclear blackmail. It has become ridiculous, no one is stopped by one red line after another, they cross them. The most recent example is yesterday's statement by Foreign Secretary Cameron regarding the Russians' latest cries that they promise to strike Russian territory, and how they will respond to this. His answer was simple: let Russia withdraw its troops from the territory of Ukraine and there will be no strikes on Russian territory," he said.

Piontkovsky says that the entire war plan has failed because Putin is waging war not only against Ukraine but has declared war on the West as well.

"We remember Putin's press conference after his meeting with Macron on February 6, 2022, two weeks before the full-scale aggression. Putin was in a euphoric state, having just returned from Beijing, where he had received the green light, and saw himself as the master of the world. He then blurted out his entire war strategy-remember, he suddenly said: we understand that at the conventional level we are inferior to the West, we are inferior to NATO, but we have super-duper nuclear weapons, "no analogues" in the world, and so on. So yes, we are inferior at the conventional level, but we will intimidate you with our nuclear weapons. But the most important thing is his environment. They understand where he has gotten them. He was confident, and they were with him, that they would intimidate the West with nuclear blackmail, and now they are forced to fight a conventional war that Putin recognized two years ago that he would lose," he added.

• Russia recently announced a possible transfer of nuclear weapons to the DPRK: the National Security and Defense Council's Central Intelligence Department explained the goal.