Russian President Vladimir Putin is spending a lot of time in isolated nuclear bunkers, according to an exiled former Russian parliamentarian.
Gennady Gudkov told the Daily Beast that Putin is taking extra precautions against the possibility of nuclear war amid Russia’s ongoing conflict with Ukraine.
“Putin is going to hide in a bunker in case of a nuclear war,” Gudkov said. “But he is not safe there either; he will be destroyed—that’s what Biden should tell Putin clearly now.”
Putin has repeatedly issued veiled threats of nuclear war in recent weeks and insisted that his willingness to use “all weapons systems available” to protect Russian territory “is not a bluff.” Still, some Putin allies say his threats are being overblown and that the Russian leader “will strike only in response to an attack.”
“The decision-making to use nuclear weapons is complicated, it involves many people and there is no Kadyrov among them,” Putin ally and political analyst Yuriy Krupnov told The Daily Beast.
Valentina Melnikova, a human rights activist helping Russian families avoid being drafted into military service, told the Daily Beast she believes Russia may launch a nuclear attack against Ukraine or the United States.
“I am sure our generals are capable of bombing Kyiv and Washington with nuclear torpedoes and bombs. I say that because I know the Russian military well—they will obey any of Putin’s orders and there is hardly anything that could stop this disaster at this point,” she warned.
During a fundraiser in New York on Thursday, President Joe Biden warned “the prospect of [nuclear] Armageddon” is real and Putin was “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons,” the New York Post reported.
“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Biden said.
In an alarming move, the Biden administration also purchased $290 million of anti-radiation medication this week. The drugs are “approved to treat blood cell injuries that accompany acute radiation syndrome in adult and pediatric patients (ARS).”
