Russian nukes could destroy Nato countries 'in half an hour', warns Kremlin space boss
8 May 2022, 19:55 | Updated: 9 May 2022, 16:20
Russia could destroy all Nato countries "in half an hour" if there was a nuclear war, the head of the Kremlin's space agency has warned.
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Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, made the stark warning as the final dress rehearsal for Monday's Victory Day parade in Moscow saw nuclear weapons wheeled through Red Square.
He revealed the aim was to defeat the "enemy" West while wiping Ukraine from the map altogether.
"NATO is waging a war against us," he said.
"They didn't announce it, but that doesn't change anything. Now it's obvious to everyone."
Rogozin added: "In a nuclear war, NATO countries will be destroyed by us in half an hour.
"But we must not allow it, because the consequences of the exchange of nuclear strikes will affect the state of our Earth.
"Therefore, we will have to defeat this economically and militarily more powerful enemy with conventional armed means."
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He also suggested that Putin would put Russia on a war footing to bolster the war effort.
"Such a victory is possible with the full solidarity of the whole country with the army, the mobilisation of the state economy," he said.
The former deputy prime minister went on to say that Russia is "not fighting the Nazis in Ukraine".
"We are liberating Ukraine from NATO occupation and pushing the worst enemy away from our western borders," he said.
It comes as Red Soviet flags and orange-and-black striped military ribbons are lining the streets of Russian cities and towns ahead of Victory Day, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
Some Russians fear that Putin will use the occasion to declare that what the Kremlin has previously called a "special military operation" in Ukraine will now be a full-fledged war.
Ukraine's intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said Moscow was covertly preparing such a plan.
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told LBC that Mr Putin was "laying the ground for being able to say, 'Look, this is now a war against Nazis, and what I need is more people'".
The Kremlin denied having such plans, calling the reports "untrue" and "nonsense".
