INF Treaty: Putin does not take the lead over Trump's nuclear weapons

Getting up to the daily headlines on nuclear obliteration is not a comfortable feeling. But Vladimir Putin seems to want an exchange of deadly threats with the United States.

While Donald Trump tears up a key arms control treaty and is committed to rebuilding his country's nuclear arsenal, the Russian president promised to follow every move.

Last week, he even joked about the nuclear Armageddon.

Military power has become the key to Russia's positioning as a country with which Putin must rely: no longer a superpower like the USSR, but still a nuclear force, with its own agenda and its own interests to defend.

So the fact that the INF Treaty is now close to ruin seems to be going to Moscow.

Signed in 1987 by Soviet and American leaders of the time, this historic agreement has eliminated a whole class of ground-based missiles capable of hitting targets in Europe at any time.

Now that the US is ending the deal, Putin has warned European countries that they will return to the line of fire as soon as Moscow and Washington react.

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But Mr Putin boasted of Russia's nuclear power even before the announcement of Mr Trump.

Last week, he was a speaker at the Valdai Annual Discussion Club in the mountains above Sochi.

Once a forum for the president to be organized by Russian experts from Russia, the "club" now lacks much bite.

This year, frankly, Mr. Putin seemed bored. At one point, he remarked that he would like to end the event soon because he had a hockey game to play.

But he improved a lot on one issue: nuclear weapons.

Hit us, we shoot back

Eliminating Western accusations of electoral interference as a targeted assassination, Putin told his audience that Russia did not fear anything or anyone.

It appeared that this confidence stemmed mainly from the nuclear power of Russia.

Putin promised that Russia would never lead a first nuclear strike.

But hit us, he has warned all potential aggressors, and we will fight back.

His statement then turned into a dark joke.

The Russians would be the victims of such a strike, Putin said, they would be "martyrs and would go to heaven, while [the aggressors] would just croak. Because they would not even have time to repent. "

The snitch of the end of the world easily escaped him, and was surprised by an approving laugh.

"It is impossible to imagine [Soviet President] Brezhnev made this kind of joke in the 1960s, "said a foreign policy analyst in Moscow.

The problem with all the war speeches, suggested Andrei Kortunov, is that politicians on both sides have lost their terror in the face of a nuclear strike. This fear has ended, he thinks, with the Cold War.

"They just do not believe it will ever happen now," Kortunov said.

"Much worse than the cold war"

For many commentators, a new arms rush seems inevitable as the INF agreement crumbles, which will appeal to many Russian servicemen.

"They criticize Mikhail Gorbachev as a traitor who was fooled by the Americans from a terrible treaty that deprived the USSR of its most important weapons," said Victor Mizin, an expert in arms control who had worked on the initial agreement in the 1980s.

"At one level, these negative feelings are pretty strong," he adds. But as someone who describes the INF treaty as something very close to his heart, he is worried.

"As an old Cold War warrior, I think the psychological situation is much worse today than during the Cold War," Mr. Mizin worries. "Then there was more predictability and more respect."

This applies to both sides.

• Reality check: Where are the nuclear weapons in the world?

There may be a limiting factor for Russia: there are no bottomless wells to exploit for money.

Whatever the problem of Western sanctions and the fall in the price of oil, budgets are already under duress. The increase in the age of retirement to reduce costs has already triggered protests and resulted in the decline of the popularity rating of Mr Putin.

But that may not worry the Russian president too much.

Another of his comments from the discussion about Valdai is remarkable: he speaks of a lack of fear when he takes risks. Putin said he learned at the spy school that the cause always took precedence over self-preservation.

As president, he sees in his cause the re-establishment of Russia as a world power. He seems ready to confront the United States head-on in a new, risky nuclear arms race.