Putin makes terrifying warning to European countries if nuclear war breaks out

Vladimir Putin issued a terrifying warning to Europe in the event of a nuclear war.

Earlier this week, the head of NATO stroked fears World War Three may be in the works as Secretary-General Mark Rutte bluntly urged members to hike defense costs or 'get your Russian language course out'.

The former Dutch prime minister is encouraging the the treaty to meet a Donald Trump-inspired pledge of five percent of GDP on defense amid Russia's ongoing aggression towards Ukraine, particularly addressing European nations while stating the US 'has carried too much of the burden for too long'.

"Putin's war machine is speeding up, not slowing down," Rutte said at the meeting in London.

"Wishful thinking will not keep us safe," he continued. "We cannot dream away the danger. Hope is not a strategy. So NATO has to become a stronger, fairer and more lethal alliance."

The NATO boss has urged allies to increase defense spending (Omar Havana/Getty Images)

However, it's not just the NATO boss who is urging Europe to step up as Putin himself clearly has little faith in the continent when it comes to defending itself from a nuclear threat.

Speaking at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum last year, the Russian president issued a terrifying warning as Sergei Karaganov, a Russian political scientist, urged his homeland to climb 'the ladder of nuclear escalation'.

Putin admitted that the world is 'already scared' of the threat of a nuclear war, but some countries should be more afraid than others.

"If God forbid, it comes to strikes, everyone should realise that Russia has an early warning system for missile attacks. The US has it. Europe does not," he said.

"They are more or less defenceless in this sense."

The Russian president said some nations should be more afraid than others ( Contributor/Getty Images)

He continued: "If those with whom we exchange such strikes [cease to] exist, whether the Americans will get involved in this exchange at the level of strategic weapons I doubt very much.

"The Europeans should think about it. But I assume that it will never come to that.

"We don’t have that need. Our armed forces so vastly outnumber them in conventional weapons that there is no need. I would ask you not to mention such things in vain."

The comments have come to light as the former head of the British Armed Forces during the war in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, said Putin could become increasingly angry if NATO allies 'got more heavily involved in the defense of Ukraine'.

The Trump administration claims the US has been footing the bill for most of the defense support for years (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Speaking to LADbible, Colonel Kemp said such a move from NATO 'could prompt Russia to strike back against one or more NATO countries, maybe by missile attacks or something like that'.

"He's probably not going to be driving tanks into Western Europe, but he has people all around Europe who are ready to carry out sabotage attacks against our countries, and things like cyber attacks, which happen fairly frequently and that could be intensified," he clarified.

Still, a 2022 study found a week-long war between the US, its allies and Russia could wipe out 360 million people - while five out of eight billion would die from starvation across the world.

So here's to hoping Putin isn't it such a rush to push the big red button after all...