Putin's nuclear threat is legitimate and not simply empty rhetoric, an opposition politician says.

Longtime opponent of the Putin government Grigory Yavlinsky further cautioned that if Russia attempted to retake Crimea, it could use its nuclear arsenal against Ukraine.

Putin has often stated that Russia would be willing to deploy nuclear weapons in a fight with the west.

A Russian opposition politician warns that Vladimir Putin's nuclear threat is "serious and not simply words".

Longtime opponent of the Putin government Grigory Yavlinsky further cautioned that if Russia attempted to retake Crimea, it could use its nuclear arsenal against Ukraine.

Born in Lviv, Yavlinsky is the founder of the liberal Yabloko party and has faced off against Putin three times in the presidential race.

Putin's nuclear threat, according to Yavlinsky, is a significant danger.

"That kind of weapon is such a severe matter. This is not just talk; it's a real aspect that you need to take into account in the current circumstance. I'm done now.

Putin has stated numerous times that Russia is prepared to deploy nuclear weapons in a war with the west.

When defending his recent choice to leave a nuclear armaments accord in an appearance with state broadcaster last month, the military campaign Russian president made the assertion.

Putin said he had to "take into account" the weapons that the United States and its NATO allies, which include France and Britain, possessed. He was speaking just days after he had suspended the country's participation in the 2010 Fresh Start agreement with the United States.

Putin said on TV station Rossiya 1: "How can we not consider their nuclear capabilities in the current circumstances, when all the major NATO nations have stated their main goal to inflict a catastrophic loss on us, to make our people suffer?

Additionally, they give Ukraine missiles worth tens of billions of dollars.

He continued by saying that the West's "one goal" was to "disband the old Soviet Union" and its "basic portion" of the Russian Federation before asserting that they could completely destroy the Russian people.

He claimed that if the West conquered his country, it could split up Russia into smaller entities, turning places like Moscow and the Urals into their own independent states.

That follows the publishing of maps after a year of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, which revealed he had mostly failed to achieve all of his primary goals.

The Russian president's largest success in the past 12 months has been the acquisition of a land corridor that gives him a direct access to Crimea, which it had already forcibly seized in 2014.

The invasion of 190,000 Russian forces from the north, east, and south in February 2022 "didn't proceed as planned," according to the British Ministry of Defense on Friday.