Hinting that he would not use nuclear weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted Wednesday that the conflict in Ukraine is "long-term."

"We have not become crazy, we know what nuclear weapons are,"Putin said during a televised meeting with the Russian Council for civil society and Human Rights, which is close to the Kremlin.

Responding to a speaker, Putin said today that "new territories have appeared", and this is "an important result for Russia". "The sea of Azov has become an internal sea, and this is a serious matter," he added, referring to the sea bordering Russia and southeastern Ukraine, which is now completely controlled by Moscow

The Kremlin has long denied that its offensive against Ukraine is aimed at seizing new territories, emphasizing that it wants to defend the Russian-speaking population and end the alliance between Kiev and the West, which Russia sees as a threat to it.

The Russian president said: "We consider weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, as a means of Defense. Resorting to it is based on what we call 'retaliatory response': if we are hit, we strike back,"he said. But he revealed that "the threat of a nuclear war is increasing", given the confrontation between Russia and the West over Ukraine, blaming the Americans and Europeans for this.

"Of the 300 thousand of our mobilized fighters, our men and defenders of the Fatherland, 150 thousand are in the area of operations," Putin explained, adding that 77 thousand are directly deployed in combat zones. Others are still in the process of training in Russia, and Putin vowed again on Wednesday that there would be no second wave of mobilization.

In turn, the United States accused Putin of "irresponsibility" after his statements about the dangers of resorting to nuclear weapons in the conflict in Ukraine.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to respond directly to Putin, but said that "any understatement in talking about nuclear weapons is absolutely irresponsible".

Price added that nuclear powers around the world, including China, India, the United States and Russia itself, have been clear since the Cold War that "nuclear war must never be fought and can never be won".

"We believe that any other rhetoric, whether it is a nuclear threat or even raising the specter of using tactical nuclear weapons, is irresponsible,"he said. "It is dangerous and goes against the spirit of that statement, which has been at the heart of the nuclear non-proliferation regime since the Cold War," he said.

Neither the United States nor Russia, the two largest nuclear powers, adopt a policy of not initiating the use of nuclear weapons.

For his part, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an interview published on Thursday that the risk of Moscow resorting to nuclear weapons in its invasion of Ukraine has diminished because the international community, including China, has" drawn a red line" for Moscow regarding this threat.