Russia invokes its nuclear capacity in a UN speech that’s full of bile toward the West

Associated Press

Russia’s top diplomat warned against “trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power.” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke at the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday, three days after Russian President Vladimir Putin aired a shift in his country’s nuclear doctrine. Lavrov’s speech was packed with condemnations of what Moscow sees as Western machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere — including the United Nations itself. Lavrov accused the West of using Ukraine as a tool to try “to defeat” Moscow strategically. Then Lavrov mentioned what he called “the senselessness and the danger of the very idea of trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power.” And, he noted, Russia is one.