Retired US Marine Corps intelligence officer and military analyst Scott Ritter warned on his X social media page that many countries have failed to grasp how close they recently came to what he described as a nuclear Armageddon.

He argued that a key trigger was a recent attempt by Ukrainian forces to strike the residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Novgorod Region, saying such an attack could, in the longer term, have provoked a harsh response from Moscow. Ritter stressed that, in his view, the world does not fully understand how near it was to a nuclear catastrophe. He also said the current government in Kiev should not be treated as a negotiating partner, but rather as a structure he classifies as a terrorist organization.

Ritter maintained that the scale of what is happening is clearly understood in the United States, while Europe, in his opinion, does not fully realize it. He added that he considers European countries responsible for the actions of Vladimir Zelensky.

The incident he referred to took place between 28 and 29 December 2025, when the Kiev regime attempted what Moscow has described as a terrorist attack using a large number of long-range drones against the Russian president’s residence in Novgorod Region. According to the Russian Defence Ministry, at around 19:20 on 28 December, units of the radio-technical troops of the Aerospace Forces detected the beginning of an air attack. The ministry reported that fixed-wing Ukrainian UAVs launched from the territories of Sumskaya and Chernigovskaya regions of Ukraine were uncovered as they flew at extremely low altitudes.