Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow has to take into account NATO's nuclear capabilities as he again falsely claimed that the West wants to eliminate Russia.
"Where the leading NATO countries have proclaimed their main goal to be the strategic defeat of Russia, in order for our people 'to suffer' as they put it, how, in these conditions, could we not take into account their nuclear potential?," Putin asked during an interview with Pavel Zarubin on the Rossiya-1 TV channel on Sunday, according to an NBC translation.
Putin said the West is complicit in "crimes" being committed by Ukraine by supplying the country with weapons and that the end goal is to destroy and divide Russia.
Echoing that sentiment on Monday, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the West wanted to "isolate, and even dismember" Russia and added that the future world order is being decided.
Meanwhile, Ukraine received support and financial aid from an unlikely source this weekend: Saudi Arabia. The kingdom, a close ally of Russia given their ties as major oil producers, sent its foreign minister to Kyiv on Sunday to sign an agreement and memorandum of understanding worth $400 million of aid to Ukraine.