MOSCOW

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of the Russian Security Council, on Thursday warned of a nuclear war in the event of Russia's defeat in its war on Ukraine.

Commenting on the forthcoming meeting of Western and Ukrainian officials at the Ramstein military base in Germany, Medvedev, a former Russian president, said he expects they will discuss new deliveries of heavy weapons and strike systems.

"And this is right after the forum in Davos, where underdeveloped political party-goers repeated like a mantra: "To achieve peace, Russia must lose," he wrote on Telegram.

He added that no one thought about drawing an "elementary conclusion" that "the defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war may provoke the outbreak of a nuclear war."

"The nuclear powers have not lost major conflicts on which their fate depends. And this should be obvious to anyone," he said.

Last December, President Vladimir Putin said Russia's military doctrine only allows defensive use of nuclear weapons, in response to an external attack.

Earlier, Medvedev, known for making loud and bellicose public statements, had asserted that Moscow could use nuclear weapons to defend itself.

Medvedev's latest remarks come a day after Putin, on a visit to a facility in Saint Petersburg that makes air defense systems, said his country would win in Ukraine because of its powerful military-industrial complex, claiming that the defense industry manufactures the same number of missiles as the rest of the world combined.