Vladimir Putin insists he is ready to destroy the West with nuclear weapons as Russia launched new hypersonic missile tests today, his top security aide has said.
Nikolai Patrushev, 71, insisted the Russian president will attack the West if attempts are made to defeat and dismember Russia.
Patrushev is seen by some as the brains behind Putin's ill-conceived war in Ukraine.
Today Russia has fired supersonic anti-ship missiles into the Sea of Japan in a chilling weapons test, its defence ministry said.
Two P-270 Moskit missiles, that can hit speeds of 2,300mph, were launched with Japan saying no damage had been reported.
A statement posted on Telegram said: "In the waters of the Sea of Japan, missile ships of the Pacific Fleet fired Moskit cruise missiles at a mock enemy sea target.
"The target, located at a distance of about 100 kilometres, was successfully hit by a direct hit from two Moskit cruise missiles."
This comes as in an interview with the Kremlin's newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Patrushev said: “Some people in the West are already talking about revenge that would lead to a military victory over Russia."
Ignoring Putin’s brutal invasion of sovereign Ukraine and threatening full-scale world war, he claimed: “Russia is patient and is not intimidating anyone with its military superiority.
“However, it possesses unique modern weaponry capable of destroying any adversary including the US in case of a threat to its existence.”
His chilling threats included Putin’s demand to dominate Europe.
The US currently "does as it pleases in Europe ignoring the fact that the leading role on the continent has historically been Russia’s”, he told the Kremlin's newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
“The Russian empire in the 19th century, the Soviet Union in the 20th.
“That's how it will be in the 21st century as well."
Patrushev, the longtime secretary of Russia’s security council, is eyeing his son, Dmitry Patrushev, 45, Putin’s agriculture minister, to become president after Putin.
But the ex-FSB chief warned: "Nato countries are a party to the [Ukraine] conflict.
“They have turned Ukraine into one big military camp...
“In trying to prolong this military confrontation as long as possible, they are not hiding their main goal - the defeat of Russia on the battlefield and its further dismemberment";
"The US authorities' unrestrained aspiration to retain the dominant role in the world has at least since 1945 been the source of all instances of escalation in tensions on the global scale."
He further claimed that American politicians are hostages to their own propaganda and therefore capable of committing missile strikes on Russia.
He added: “That is shortsighted idiocy of a very dangerous kind.”
Putin's henchman further claimed the US uses “military-biological laboratories to create new viruses to destroy the peoples of unwanted countries while once clean American cities are drowning in filth and rubbish”.
He emphasises how “false” war crimes allegations are made against Putin and his entourage while the West “turns a blind eye to real acts of genocide and financial machinations carried out with the White House's approval”.
But in his analysis, he maintained “the collapse of the EU is not far off”.
He believed Washington is looking for the downfall of the EU to not allow Europe to prosper.
In his warped analysis, sanctions against Putin such as curbs on Western medical supplies to Russia by major pharmaceuticals are similar to Hitler’s gas chambers.
“It is well known that most of these same companies at one time worked on the development of poison gases and soul-killing agents for Nazi Germany,” he said.
“They fully supported the ideology of genocide of the so-called ‘superfluous’ peoples.”
His rant continued: “Let us remember how the same Anglo-Saxons fostered the Nazis in the 1930s, hoping to direct them against the Soviet Union.
“Having earned financial and geopolitical dividends from World War II, today Washington and London are once again indulging in Nazism and fascism.
“Using Ukraine, they do not mind stirring up a pan-European or even global conflict, imagining that they can get away with it.”
His rant appeared to try to rally a Moscow elite who are increasingly doubtful over the wisdom of Putin and Patrushev’s direction.
The West “has opposed our country more than once", he said.
“Sometimes under the banners of the Poles and Swedes, sometimes with Napoleonic eagles, under the British flag or under the Hitler swastika.
“The result is the same - all attempts to crush Russia are in vain.”
