Andrew Marr: 'Bad Vlad's' explicit nuclear threats were not used even in the worst days of the Cold War
21 September 2022, 18:14
"Bad Vlad's" explicit nuclear threats were not even used in the worst days of the Cold War, Andrew Marr has said.
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Opening LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr, the presenter said Vladimir Putin's latest nuclear weapon threats were not used at the peak of the Cold War.
"So there's Liz Truss in New York, trying to focus our minds on the Russian threat and the importance of everyone standing together," Andrew said.
"And along comes old Vladimir Putin and does her job for her, overnight threatening the West with nuclear weapons as well as mobilising another 300,000 veterans for the depleted Russian army.
"Russia has weapons of mass destruction, Bad Vlad pointed out, as if we’d forgotten.
"'And if the Territorial integrity of our country is threatened we will without question use all the means at our disposal… this is not a bluff.'"
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Andrew Marr dubs Vladmir Putin 'Bad Vlad'.
Andrew continued: "But just in case anyone was confused, a former Putin advisor, Sergei Markov, popped up on the radio this morning to make it clear the Russian President was ready to use his arsenal against Western countries including Great Britain, and blaming what he called the 'crazy behaviour' of Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss for the threat to London.
"Now, at one level this seems the flailing, blackmailing language of a country whose army is coming apart in a war it never thought it could lose.
"But these are explicit threats of a kind you never heard in the worst days of the Cold War.
"We'd be wrong to panic, no doubt, but we'd also be foolish to dismiss them entirely out of hand.
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He went on to say: "But I'm very much aware but up and down the country there are businesses desperate to know whether government help announced today on fuel bills - the result of Putin’s last attempt to spook the West - will keep them in business or whether they face the end this autumn.
"The package, estimated by outsiders to be worth around 25 billion pounds, will only last for sure for 6 months."
