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In a warning to the West he added he is ready to destroy anyone who uses a nuclear bomb on Russia first but insisted he has no plans for a preemptive strike. The Russian president was

speaking to an audience of international experts in Sochi, the Black Sea city which hosted the Winter Olympics in 2014. He said if tensions with the West boil over he expects his country

will be hit by nuclear weapons first. The Kremlin leader said: ”We have no concept of a preemptive strike. "In such a situation, we expect to be struck by nuclear weapons, but we will

not use them.” But he went on to make an indirect threat to Western leaders saying he wants to “destroy” whichever country nukes Moscow and his country’s citizens would be the only ones who

would go to heaven.  "The aggressor will have to understand that retaliation is inevitable, that it will be destroyed and that we, as victims of aggression, as martyrs, will go to

heaven. "They will simply die because they won't even have time to repent”. The threats are the latest in the war of words between Western leaders and the Kremlin. Earlier this

week, an Russian MP boasted his country’s latest defence system could shut down the entire planet. Vladimir Zhirinovsky said Russia had a range of new missiles which he hoped would “scare”

Washington DC. He said: “The Americans are scared in general, they are scared that the world’s best air defence system is Russia’s S-300. “And we have S-400, S-500, S-600 and S-700, we can

shut down the whole planet and no plane will take off.” Earlier this month, Russia branded Britain its “enemy”. Deputy foreign minister Oleg Syromolotov insisted Moscow would respond with a

fierce attack if Britain’s military strikes. He told Russian national news agency RIA Novosti: “Great Britain has been Russia’s enemy since Ivan the Terrible. “If they are making such

declarations, then they will probably try it out, but we’ll defend ourselves and the response will be quite severe.” Mr Syromolotov’s words were in response to British forces practicing what

they would do in the event Moscow carried out a cyber attack on the UK. British defence chiefs played out a scenario in which they launched a counter cyber attack against the Kremlin. More

than 5,000 British troops took part in large-scale cyber warfare exercises in Oman with dozens of tanks, ships and planes preparing for a military confrontation with Russian forces. A senior

security source told the Sunday Times: “Russia will continue to try to undermine our western democracy. “They won’t probably go to conventional war, but there are islands off Estonia they

could take to test Nato’s commitment to article five. “If they sank our aircraft carrier with a nuclear-tipped torpedo, what is our response? “There’s nothing between sinking their submarine

and dropping a nuclear weapon on northern Kamchatka. “This is why cyber is so important. You can go on the offensive and turn off the lights in Moscow to tell them that they are not doing

the right things.” It was confirmed today that President Putin will meet leaders from Turkey, Germany and France next week in Istanbul to discuss the ongoing war in Syria. Chancellor Merkel,

President Macron, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Putin hope to secure a truce in the last rebel-held region in Syria to end the war which has been going on since 2011. Mrs Merkel

and Mr Macron are expected to put pressure on the Russian leader at the October 27 summit over his backing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.