Vladimir Putin is plotting his strategy for the New Year (Image: GETTY)
From his office in the Kremlin, the Russian President will be plotting his strategy for the New Year as he watches some of his fellow world leaders face January 1 in a state of disarray and braced for further destabilisation. And there is no reason to believe his New Year’s resolutions will include reining in his robust foreign affairs policy of loudly rejecting all accusations of wrongdoing while simultaneously claiming to be the victim of smears from a “Russia-phobic” international community.
This lowering of the threshold may spark a global nuclear disaster
A Kremlin insider said: “Russia still faces many challenges, but Putin has a plan, money and powerful friends.”
His relationship with his White House adversary Donald Trump will remain under close scrutiny in 2019 after a tense end to 2018. Mr Putin continues to hint at the possibility of face-to-face talks after Mr Trump backed out of a meeting at the G20 Summit in Argentina but Washington has ruled out any such get-together until Russia ends hostilities against Ukraine.
An interesting and potentially significant change in the dynamic between the two leaders came out of the blue just before Christmas when Mr Trump announced he was pulling US forces out of Syria, leaving Russia in control of the war-torn country and making Mr Putin a major player in Middle Eastern politics.
Syria and the Middle East will certainly by high on Mr Putin’s agenda going in to 2019.
Vladimir Putin’s relationship with Donald Trump will remain under the spotlight next year (Image: GETTY)
There are also major changes afoot in Europe, which has always had a fairly uneasy relationship with its Russian neighbours.
Angela Merkel, who Mr Putin viewed as his most formidable counterpart in Europe, has been considerably weakened by a catastrophic loss of support in Germany and has quit the leadership of Germany’s ruling Christian Democrat Union while pledging to leave office in 2021.
Emmanuel Macron is struggling to keep a grip on power in France and the European Union goes into 2019 with Brexit still unresolved and facing fresh confrontations with the leaders of newly-installed populist governments, many of whom cite Mr Putin as an inspiration.
NATO has been sabre-rattling in recent months but failed to step in when Russia flexed its muscles in the Black Sea by seizing three Ukrainian naval vessels and taking 24 sailors captive and then brushing aside any attempts at international intervention as unwarranted interference.
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have strengthened military bonds between Russia and China (Image: GETTY)
Against this chaotic backdrop, Mr Putin is reinforcing Russia’s bonds with China, with relations deepening and also taking on a worrying military dimension with while Beijing adopting an increasingly aggressive stance against Washington in both trade and over disputed territory in the South China Sea.
Mr Putin has spent most of the year boasting about advances in his country’s weapons systems while at the same time crying foul over Mr Trump’s bid to pull out of the 30-year-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
But he insists Moscow is not interested in an arms race and is only seeking to maintain the balance of power with his high-tech hypersonic glide missiles, futuristic laser weapons and armies of robotic soldiers.
He said: “Generally, this is simply an element of containing and evening parities in the strategic balance. This is what it is.
“This means keeping parity and nothing more than that. We do not seek advantages but we keep the balance and ensure our security.
“In actual fact, today we observe the disintegration of the international system of armaments and arms race containment.”
He said Russia was forced to create new weapons systems capable of breaching anti-ballistic missile defences in response to America’s decision to quit the ABM Treaty that was a cornerstone in the sphere of the nuclear weapons non-proliferation.
And he lamented Washington’s readiness to take another step by withdrawing from the INF treaty.
Vladimir Putin insists he is not interested in a 21st Century arms race (Image: GETTY)
He said: ”It is very difficult to imagine how the situation will develop further. And what do we have to do if these missiles appear in Europe?
“Of course, we will have to ensure our security, using some steps, so let them not whine that we are gaining some advantages.”
Mr Putin said he regretted a growing global tendency to underestimating the risks of a nuclear war.
He said: “I just thought somehow the danger of such a development in the world is somehow fading into the background. It seems impossible or something not so important.
“In the meantime, should anything like that happen, God forbid, this may result in the death of civilisation and, possibly, the entire planet.”
The President said he hoped mankind would have enough common sense to prevent World War 3 from ever breaking out but warned against lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.
He said: “There is a trend of lowering the threshold for the use, there are ideas to create small-yield nuclear warheads, and this is already not a global use, but a tactical use, and Western analysts already voice these ideas that there is nothing dangerous, and they could be used.
“But this lowering of the threshold may spark a global nuclear disaster.”