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Putin boosts his stock of nuclear warheads to nine-year high as he threatens West that putting troops into Ukraine ‘means war with Russia’

Daily Mail, By WILL STEWART and WILL HALLOWELL, NEWS REPORTER, 12 September 2026

Vladimir Putin has boosted the number of nuclear warheads in his arsenal as he warns Nato countries that sending troops to Ukraine ‘means war’.

Over the past year, Russia has increased its stock of nuclear warheads deployed on missiles and bombers by 78 to 1,796, marking a nine-year high, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Mr Putin has increased the number every year since the beginning of the war with Ukraine in 2022. 

But the US saw no rise and Britain and France did not deploy additional warheads, with 170 and 280 respectively.

Mr Putin, however, denied that Russia posed a threat to Nato allies in Europe and then warned of war. 

Speaking at the BRICS summit in New Delhi, he said: ‘Now they [the West] are talking about how they are thinking about bringing troops to the territory of Ukraine. This means war with Russia.’

His threat coincides with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s warning that Mr Putin could use nuclear weapons to turn Nato state Lithuania into ‘scorched earth’ and remove it from the ‘world map’.

Mr Putin, who once claimed he had no aggressive intentions against Ukraine, said he had no plan to invade or threaten existing Nato states in Europe.

He said: ‘There is no such threat, and there has never been. We are not threatening European countries, nor are we going to threaten them. Why would we?

‘No one seems to even consider that we have no grounds for any conflict with Europe.’

Yet Mr Medvedev, Mr Putin’s number two on the Russian Security Council, said the deployment of nuclear weapons in Lithuania, a former part of the Soviet Union, could trigger a doomsday response from the president.

He said: ‘They would like to amend their constitution, which stated the non-nuclear nature of this large Baltic state, and thus open the door to the possible deployment of any weapons, including nuclear weapons.

‘No one will stand up for them. Even if it becomes a scorched earth, no other [Western] countries will go to war for them.

‘And the well-known Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty will not be implemented, everyone recognises this……………………https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16125435/Putin-boosts-nuclear-warheads-nine-year-high.html

September 15, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, weapons and war