Credit : BRICS NEWS
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia is prepared for a war with Europe but is not seeking one, warning that if tensions between the two sides went too far “there will be no winners at all”.
The remarks were highlighted by the news aggregator BRICS News, which reported on X in the early hours of October 30, 2026, Malaysia time, that Putin said Russia is prepared for war with Europe, but is not seeking it. Putin made the comments on October 29 at a press conference after the close of the third Russia-Africa Summit in Moscow.
Asked whether Russia should prepare for a possible war with Europe before 2030, Putin rejected talk in European capitals of readying for conflict. “Many [in Europe] talk about nothing but preparing for war [with Russia] by 2030. Is that the right approach? No. First of all, we’re ready, but we don’t want any war with Europe. If any of them want one, let them prepare,” he said, according to a translation published by Meduza.
‘No winners’
Putin urged those in Europe who advocate war to remember that if things go too far there would be no winners, and said Russia remembers the lessons of both world wars and is doing everything it can to prevent anything like them from happening again, Meduza reported. China’s Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying that European Union leaders had so far failed to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and were unlikely to do so by 2030.
He also said there were people in Europe who did not want Russia’s strategic defeat but wanted constructive dialogue, and that Moscow supported any steps aimed at restoring full relations with European countries, whether through the European Union or bilaterally, according to Xinhua and RIA Novosti. The Telegraph noted that Putin voiced a similar position in December 2025, when he said Russia was not planning to fight Europe but was ready “right now” if Europe started a war.
Call with Finland and Norway
The comments followed a telephone call earlier in the week with Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. Putin said the two leaders had initiated the call and stressed at the outset that they were speaking for their own countries rather than for the European Union, and that they had faced criticism afterwards, according to Xinhua and the Czech news site iDNES.cz. He called the conversation a step in the right direction, The Telegraph reported.
Xinhua said it was Putin’s first call with leaders of European countries that support Ukraine in more than a year, and that it came as a local ceasefire in Alyoshki began on October 27 and ahead of planned three-way talks between Russia, the United States and Ukraine. Putin said the call covered security in the Baltic Sea and northern Europe, and that Russia did not want to see a situation in the Baltic like that in the Persian Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz, but would respond to any challenge.
Despite Putin’s talk of not wanting a war with Europe, Russia has been testing European nations and NATO for months through a series of hybrid attacks, including drones exploding in neighbouring countries, The Telegraph reported.
Source : BRICS NEWS, with reporting from Meduza, Xinhua, RIA Novosti, The Telegraph and iDNES.cz.
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