Amid Media Saturation, Kremlin Decides To Add One More Nuclear Headline, Aimed At Kiev

With the flood of ominous nuclear headlines saturating international and Western media this weekend, particularly regarding Iran, why not one more – but in a different theatre?

Former Russian president and deputy head of the country’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has once again decided to play ‘bad cop’ (to Putin’s ‘good cop’ who says he remains open to negotiations) and issue a nuclear warning directed at Ukraine.

Responding to a topic of discussion that came up during President Putin’s attendance at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Medvedev on Saturday warned that “possible attempts by the enemy to create and use a so-called dirty bomb” would meet a “proportional” response from Moscow.

Continuing the thought, he threatened: “With what? With a clean bomb: Tactical nuclear weapons. We have enough of them.”

He said in the statement posted to Telegram, “I will keep silent about the consequences for future life and the environment. But the sick perverts in Kiev with their twisted imagination should have a good idea of it. Let them take a walk in the Chernobyl exclusion zone and watch those colorful TV series.”

The series referenced appears to be the HBO miniseries which is simply called Chernobyl.

Putin himself had actually addressed the same scenario too over the weekend, per state media translation:

“Our response will be very harsh and, most likely, catastrophic for both the neo-Nazi regime and, unfortunately, for Ukraine itself. I hope that they will never come to that,” he told the St. Petersburg audience of media and national security officials.

For all the threatening talk, there’s at yet been no evidence of such a Ukrainian dirty bomb plot. But understandably it’s something the Kremlin and Russian people are deeply concerned about, given the June 1st ‘Operation Spider’s Web’ attack showed Ukrainian capabilities to strike deep within Russia, and cause serious damage.

Throughout the war there have also been tit-for-tat sabotage attacks in Ukrainian cites, Russian cities, as well as things like arson attacks in Europe and the Baltics.

‘All of Ukraine is ours’, says Putin as he threatens nuclear strike https://t.co/IBB8EddhAq

— LBC News (@LBCNews) June 22, 2025

Alarmingly, the world is suddenly in 2025 witnessing an avalanche of nuclear discourse given the showdown over Iran’s nuclear program, also given Washington’s decision to bomb uranium enrichment facilities hard. Tehran has vowed to continue pursing a nuclear energy program, which it has long maintained is for peaceful domestic energy consumption.