‘Putin is Putin, and Khrushchev was Khrushchev’: Dmitry Peskov objects to Cuban missile crisis parallels

In today’s press briefing, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made clear that “Putin is Putin” and should not be compared to Nikita Khrushchev. Nor should Russia’s “military operation” in Ukraine be compared to the Cuban missile crisis.

When asked about his attitude to such comparisons, Peskov replied:

Putin is Putin, and Khrushchev was Khrushchev, may he rest in peace. I don’t see how anyone could compare Putin with anybody else.

• The 1962 Cuban missile crisis erupted when the USSR deployed nuclear weapons on Cuba, following the U.S. decision to place its missiles in Turkey. That point in history has long been considered the closest humanity ever came to nuclear war. The crisis was resolved when both sides withdrew their nuclear weapons from Cuba and Turkey.
• Concerns about Russia’s nuclear capacities and fears of their possible use in Ukraine sometimes lead to comparisons between the present situation and the Cuban missile crisis.
• Vladimir Putin’s statements on the nuclear issue have been mixed and contradictory. While saying that Russia doesn’t plan a nuclear strike, the Russian president has emphasized that Russia would use “all of its available means” to “defend” the territories it gained through annexation (including Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine).

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