EXCERPTS-Russian President Vladimir Putin interview to state media

"We have our own principles." However, Putin said Russia had never faced the need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, where the conflict has raged since February 2022.

President Vladimir Putin gave a wide-ranging interview to Russia's RIA state news agency and Rossiya-1 state television, days before a March 15-17 election that is certain to give him another six years in power. Below are key excerpts from the interview:

NUCLEAR READINESS "From a military-technical point of view, we are, of course, ready," Putin, said in response to a question on whether Russia was ready for a nuclear war.

Putin said the U.S. understood that if it deployed American troops on Russian territory - or to Ukraine - Russia would treat the move as an intervention. He was asked whether Russia and the United States were playing a "game of chicken" and if, with neither side ready to swerve away, a collision was inevitable.

"(In the United States) there are enough specialists in the field of Russian-American relations and in the field of strategic restraint," Putin said. "Therefore, I don't think that here everything is rushing to it (nuclear confrontation), but we are ready for this." "Weapons exist in order to use them," Putin said. "We have our own principles."

However, Putin said Russia had never faced the need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, where the conflict has raged since February 2022. "Why do we need to use weapons of mass destruction? There has never been such a need."

But if the United States conducted nuclear tests, Russia might do the same, he said. "It's not necessary ... we still need to think about it, but I don't rule out that we can do the same."

TROOPS TO FINNISH BORDER Putin criticised the decision of Finland and Sweden to join the NATO military alliance.

"This is an absolutely meaningless step (for Finland and Sweden) from the point of view of ensuring their own national interests," Putin said. "We didn't have troops there (at the Finnish border), now they will be there. There were no systems of destruction there, now they will appear."

U.S. ELECTION "We do not interfere in any way in any elections," Putin said.

"And, as I have said many times, we will work with any leader who is trusted by the American people, the American voter." "In the last year of his work as president, Mr. Trump, today's presidential candidate, reproached me for sympathising with (Joe) Biden .... He told me in one of the conversations: you want - sorry, I will say it the way he said it, this is a quote - Sleepy Joe to win" Putin said.

"And then, to my surprise, they began to persecute him (Trump) because we allegedly supported him as a candidate. Well, it's some kind of complete nonsense." RECENT UKRAINIAN DRONE AND MILITIA ATTACKS ON RUSSIAN REGIONS

"The main goal, I have no doubt about it, is to - if not to disrupt the presidential elections in Russia - then at least to somehow interfere with the normal process of expressing the will of citizens." NORTH KOREA NUCLEAR WEAPONS

"The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has its own nuclear umbrella. They didn't ask us for anything." GOVERNMENT RESHUFFLE

"We need to talk about this after the elections, after the votes are counted." "It seems to me that it is not the right time now to talk about it. But in general, the government is working ... is working quite satisfactorily." 

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