CNN —Nearly 10 months after his invasion of Ukraine began, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday acknowledged that the conflict is “going to take a while,” as he also warned of the “increasing” threat of nuclear war. And without categorically ruling out the first use of nuclear weapons, Putin said he viewed the Russian nuclear arsenal as a deterrent rather than a provocation. “Nevertheless, we have a strategy… namely, as a defense, we consider weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons – it is all based around the so-called retaliatory strike,” he said. We are aware of what nuclear weapons are. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant been rocked by explosions in recent months amid fighting nearby, with Kyiv and Moscow blaming each other for the attacks.

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