Russia State TV Warns U.S. a Nuclear Strike Will Happen—'In the Crosshairs'

A Russian state TV host has warned that if the Ukraine war escalates to a "nuclear phase," the Kremlin will strike the U.S. with nuclear weapons as it is "in the crosshairs."

Russian political commentator and president of Russia's Institute of the Middle East Yevgeny Satanovsky made the warning in a clip that has now gone viral.

The adviser to the Ukrainian Internal Affairs Ministry, Anton Gerashchenko, shared the clip on his Twitter page on June 12 and the video—translated by Gerashchenko—has so far been viewed more than 100,000 times.

This comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Friday, June 9, he would begin deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus on July 7-8, days before a NATO summit is set to be held in neighboring country Lithuania.

"The question is, will it all reach the nuclear phase or not? Because if it keeps going like this, it will definitely happen," Satanovsky said on Russian state TV.

"And it won't be tactical [but strategic] nuclear weapons that we'll be striking at Ukraine, believe me, the United States of America, and all the targets that need to be in the crosshairs.

"They have been there since Soviet times and those in the U.S., and those in Europe, and those in other places where American nuclear weapons are concentrated, where there are American military bases.

"So I wish that on the way to the nuclear phase we could finish off the enemy without crossing the Rubicon. But if we have to, what can we do?

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian commentators and officials have said the Kremlin was prepared to use nuclear weapons in the conflict.

In April 2023, Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, said the likelihood of nuclear weapons—described as the "backbone that holds the state together"—being used was growing by the day.

Medvedev, who was Putin's stand-in president between 2008 and 2012 and now serves as deputy head of Russia's Security Council, has issued nuclear threats frequently.

"In my opinion, [concerns about climate change] is nothing compared to the prospect of being at the epicenter of an explosion with a temperature of 5,000 Kelvin (scale), a shock wave of 350 meters per second and a pressure of 3,000 kilograms per square meter, with penetrating radiation, that is, ionizing radiation and an electromagnetic pulse," he said at an educational event in late April, according to Russia's state-run news agency RIA Novosti.

"Is there such a prospect today? (Unfortunately), yes. And it is growing every day for well-known reasons," he said.

Previously, in January, he said in a Telegram post discussing NATO support for Ukraine's military: "Defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger a nuclear war."

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email for comment.