As the UK and US continue to vacillate on authorizing Kyivto use long-range Western weapons inside Russia, various Moscow mouthpieces are trying to influence the outcome by raising the nuclear weapons flag.

It is no surprise that Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, entered the fray in his customary weekend Telegram post.

In it, he warns that the West’s assumption that the Kremlin would never resort to the nuclear option beyond “verbal interventions” couldn’t be more wrong.

Medvedev says that a nuclear conflict “is really not needed by anyone,” and adds that such a response would be “an extremely difficult decision with irreversible consequences.”

However, he says that Moscow already had “formal grounds” to use nuclear weapons according to the current nuclear doctrine in response to Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

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He argues that Russia has been “showing patience,” before adding in his habitually picturesque fashion: “However, the pompous Anglo-Saxon imbeciles do not want to admit one thing: any patience comes to an end.”

Medvedev warns that Moscow doesn’t necessarily need to use the nuclear option as it has access to new non-nuclear weapons technologies that could reduce Kyiv to “a giant molten spot” if and when its patience runs out.

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“And that would be it,” he wrote. “A giant, grey, molten spot instead of ‘the city that was the mother of Russia’. Holy s**t! It's impossible, but it could happen…”

Ahead of Friday’s meeting in Washington between US President Joe Biden and the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, during which the use of Anglo-French Storm Shadow/SCALP EG cruise missiles in Russia was to be discussed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursdaythat if they were to give permission to Kyiv, that would put NATO countries “at war with Russia.”

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Speaking after the meeting, Starmer said no final decision had been taken on use of the missiles while suggesting that there could be further developments during the Heads of State and Government level UN General Assembly meeting in New York on Sept. 22-23.

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