When Vladimir Putin sent thousands upon thousands of his troops streaming across the border and into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he delivered a chilling warning to the West.

Stay out of it, or else.

Now, more than two and a half years into the invasion of Ukraine, Putin and his mouthpieces have issued a near-constant stream of threats at the UK, US and other European nations, warning of nuclear Armageddon should NATO countries dare to intervene. 

Despite hesitance to deploy boots on the ground or green-light the use of long-range weaponry to strike targets deep into Russia, Western support for Ukraine has been significant, delivering billions upon billions of military aid up to and including the provision of F-16 fighter jets. 

But as Western support for Kyiv grew, so too did the intensity of Moscow’s sabre-rattling.

In recent months the threats have become increasingly unhinged, with officials and propagandists painting pictures of doomsday that include sinking the UK under a radioactive tidal wave and hitting Westminster with a direct nuclear strike.

Now, as Sir Keir Starmer, Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron mull over the prospect of allowing Ukraine to hit back at Russian targets with Western missiles, Putin declared yesterday that he will amend his nation’s nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold at which Moscow will deploy its fearsome arsenal. 

Amid this latest thinly veiled nod to the prospect of nuclear war, MailOnline takes a look back at how the Kremlin’s threats of Armageddon have changed since Putin’s first warning upon the invasion of Ukraine. 

‘CONSEQUENCES YOU HAVE NEVER FACED’ 

Putin said in a speech to launch his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine that Russia is a leading nuclear power ‘and possesses certain advantages in some of the newest types of weaponry. 

‘In this regard, no one should have any doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to defeat and horrible consequences for any potential aggressor.’

He later adds: ‘Whoever tries to hinder us, or threaten our country or our people, should know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to consequences that you have never faced in your history.’

Putin told Russians: ‘I have decided to conduct a special military operation. Russia cannot exist with a constant threat emanating from the territory of Ukraine.

‘You and I have been left with no opportunity to protect our people other than the one we use today.’

The Russian leader’s chilling warning came just a day after the United Nations Security Council had convened an emergency meeting urging Putin to stop his tanks.

Putin ignored the plea, going on TV to describe the invasion as a ‘special military occupation’ before saying he wanted to ‘demilitarise’ and ‘de-Nazify’, not occupy, the country.

‘NOT A BLUFF’

In September 2022, Putin ordered Russia’s first military mobilisation since World War Two and said: ‘If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people – this is not a bluff.’

He added: ‘I shall stress – by all means available to us. Those trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the tables can turn on them.’

Former Russian MP and Putin advisor Sergei Markov also delivered a bare-faced tirade on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, launching into a series of threats about nuclear war.

‘It’s not a good morning for everybody. In Russia, there’s partial mobilisation and for your British listeners, Vladimir Putin told you that he would be ready to use nuclear weapons against Western countries… including against Great Britain.

‘Your cities will be targeted.’

Later that month, the Kremlin chief said the United States created a ‘precedent’ when it dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945.

He made the statement during a speech filled with hostility towards the West delivered from the Kremlin calling Western leaders ‘Satanists’ and accusing ‘Anglo Saxons’ of blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines.

The Russian despot ranted about sex-change operations, claimed America is occupying Germany and Korea and vowed to ‘smash’ the West in the disturbing remarks as he announced the annexation of four regions in Ukraine.

‘DESTRUCTION OF CIVILISATION’

Putin declared that any attempt to use nuclear weapons on Russia would provoke a split-second response with hundreds of nuclear missiles that no enemy could survive. 

‘I think no person of sound mind and clear memory would think of using nuclear weapons against Russia,’ he scoffed, before declaring that his forces had tested and will place on combat duty their latest nuclear-capable weapons, the Burevestnik cruise missile and Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile. 

He said parliament should review Russia’s position on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to ‘mirror’ the position of the United States, which has not ratified it. 

Russia’s parliament later withdrew Russia’s ratification of the treaty.

Putin also told Western countries they risk provoking a nuclear war if they send troops to fight in Ukraine – one of many warnings to discourage the involvement of NATO. 

They ‘must realise that we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory,’ he said. 

‘All this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and the destruction of civilisation. Don’t they get that?’ 

‘WEAPONS EXIST IN ORDER TO USE THEM’

Asked in an interview with state-controlled Rossiya-1 television if Russia is really ready for a nuclear war, Putin said in March: ‘From a military-technical point of view, we are, of course, ready.’ 

In unsettling comments made during the interview, he reminded viewers that Russia’s nuclear doctrine permitted the use of nuclear weapons in the event of a perceived threat to national security.

‘Weapons exist in order to use them,’ he declared. ‘We have our own principles.’

He warned that if US troops are deployed in Russia or Ukraine, the Kremlin will view this as American intervention, meaning Washington would be seen as an active adversary in the war.

Putin went on to add that Russia’s nuclear weapons programme was far larger and more advanced than any other. 

‘Our triad, the nuclear triad, it is more modern than any other triad. 

‘Only we and the Americans actually have such triads. And we have advanced much more here.’

THREAT TO ‘SINK UK UNDER NUCLEAR TIDAL WAVE’

Dmitry Kiselyov, one of Putin’s leading mouthpieces and propagandists, has on several occasions threatened to sink Britain under a radioactive tidal wave – one of the more novel and menacing threats to have come out of Moscow. 

He made the threat in April of this year, taking to Russian state television to display a simulated mockup of how nuclear weapons would be used to wash away the UK. 

Any bid by the West to put boots on the ground in Ukraine to ‘inflict a strategic defeat on Russia’ would result in Armageddon, Kiselyov warned.

Putin would unleash his Satan-2 and other deadly nuclear missiles, he said.

‘France as a nuclear power will have to be disarmed instantly. The British Isles will simply go under water.

‘There are technologies for this… This is not propaganda. In our programme ten years ago, in 2014, we said – possibly, for the first time – that guaranteed retribution was inevitable.

‘Do not drive Russia into a corner. Russia is the only country in the world that is truly capable of turning (Western countries) into radioactive ash.’

Then at the start of this month, Russian hardline MP Andrei Gurulev sneered ‘swim, swim, swim’ as he demanded the use of Moscow’s unique Poseidon high-speed underwater atomic drone on Britain.

Kremlin propaganda TV on the Rossiya-1 channel demanded a ‘critical threat’ from Putin to stop Britain, the US and other Western countries giving permission to Ukraine to use long-range missiles for strikes on Russian territory.

‘There is, of course, a more radical option,’ said Lt-Gen Gurulev, a former tank commander and military strategist. 

‘The people of Britain are there, they also want to live a good and happy life at our expense, right? 

‘But if there is no Britain, there is no problem,’ he said, before calling for the use of the nuclear underwater drone. 

NUCLEAR STRIKE IN CENTRAL LONDON

In recent days, a staunchly pro-Putin propaganda TV channel unveiled a simulation of a devastating nuclear strike on London that it said would cause 850,000 deaths and injure 2 million people. 

The four-minute-long simulation overlaid with English commentary was part of a concerted campaign to discourage Britain from allowing Ukraine to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles to hit targets inside Russia.

The video broadcast by Tsargrad TV channel began by threatening: ‘Imagine for a moment that the unimaginable happens.

‘A nuclear weapon explodes over London. In this documentary, we explore the devastating consequences of this catastrophe.

‘In the simulation, we will use a warhead with a yield of 750 kilotons. That’s a pretty powerful charge.’

The commentary warns viewers: ‘Upon detonation, a fireball as hot as the sun rapidly expands, reaching a radius of 950 metres [1,039 yards].

‘Anything trapped inside this fireball is instantly vaporised.

‘In our simulation, the epicentre of the explosion is at Westminster. People within that radius won’t even feel anything because the nerve impulse transmission speed is slower.

‘Within 5 km [3 miles] of the epicentre the blast radius city of London, Camden town, Kensington, Brixton these areas will receive the most destruction.’

A ticker on the screen also totted up the number of possible fatalities.

‘Buildings will be destroyed and debris will fill the streets, creating extremely dangerous conditions for everyone in the vicinity.

‘Given the population density in central London, the initial death toll could exceed 250,000 people and around 600,000 injured within a radius of 10 km [6.25 miles] the radiation will cause third-degree burns.

‘Within that radius, anything that can burn will catch fire.’

UPDATING THE NUCLEAR DOCTRINE

Russia’s nuclear doctrine, last updated and published in 2020, sets out the conditions under which a Russian president would consider using a nuclear weapon.

The doctrine as it stands says that Moscow can deploy nukes broadly as a response to an attack using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, or to the use of conventional weapons against Russia ‘when the very existence of the state is put under threat’.

But Putin yesterday declared the nuclear doctrine needed to be ‘corrected’ to be brought in line with the increased threat he says Russia is facing amid the ongoing war in Ukraine and the West’s support of Kyiv.

The Kremlin has so far declined to specify exactly what those updates would be. Still, the innovations outlined by Putin include a widening of the threats under which Russia would consider a nuclear strike, the inclusion of ally Belarus under the nuclear umbrella and the idea that a rival nuclear power supporting a conventional strike on Russia would also be considered to be attacking it.

The new doctrine has yet to be published and the Kremlin’s press secretary declined to say if or when it would be revealed.

But the move represents a lowering of the threshold at which Moscow may consider deploying its nuclear arsenal.