Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev says the invasion of Ukraine is meant to prevent WWIII

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev wants you to know that the invasion of Ukraine is designed to prevent a Third World War. In an interview with the French television network La Chaîne Info, Russia’s former president (and former prime minister) explained that WWIII could have started if Ukraine had been allowed to join NATO, paving the way for a supposed Western military operation against Russia.

Medvedev also argued that Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine represents the “most modest option” available to Moscow, saying that Russian troops are targeting only Ukraine’s military and avoiding the wider destruction that would accompany a more aggressive offensive. “[Ukraine’s] infrastructure would have been completely destroyed, its decision-making centers, its state authorities, and so on. We didn’t go that route,” claimed Medvedev, ignoring the catastrophic and often indiscriminate damage Russian troops have inflicted on Ukrainian population centers since February 2022.

While making these bellicose remarks, Medvedev also emphasized that Russia currently has no grounds for using nuclear weapons, repeating Moscow’s position that the only justification for resorting to this option would be another country’s first strike or “other actions that threaten the existence of the Russian state itself.”