Vladimir Putin’s latest move has done little to dampen concerns that the outbreak of World War 3 may be on the horizon.

Heightened geo-political tensions as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war have been an ever-present factor in recent years, and with no obvious end in sight, global citizens have every right to fear that a conflict involving many, if not all of the world’s major military powers may be imminent.

If we’re to believe reports from the earliest days of their invasion of Ukraine, Russia had initially planned and presumed to have subdued their neighboring country within a matter of weeks. Now, more than four years after the fact, Russia find themselves in a drawn-out, bloody campaign that’s cost them the lives of untold men, not to mention left their reputation on the world stage in tatters.

Yet even taking their self-inflicted beleaguered position into account, it’s hard not to look to the future and wonder what further moves Russia are plotting.

In typically bullish fashion, Vladimir Putin fired a warning to the Baltic states earlier this year concerning potential invasions. New reports now claim he’s made another decision that signals ominous intent to other nations.

According to Putin’s aide Nikolai Patrushev, Russia has now transferred its naval nuclear forces to a state of full combat readiness.

“The Russian Navy is capable of ensuring the country’s security across all maritime and oceanic theaters under any scenario,” Patrushev claimed. “Our naval strategic nuclear forces maintain a state of full combat readiness.”

Patrushev also labeled the Northern European nations, Ukraine, and the AUKUS bloc (consisting of Australia, the UK and US) threats to Russia. According to UNN, he stated that “the creation of a naval alliance of Northern European countries and Ukraine must be taken into account in the list of military threats to Russia.”

Reports state that Putin himself ordered the aforementioned transference of naval nuclear forces.

“All threats emanating from potential adversaries are taken into account in the development plans of the Navy, in particular in the Strategy for the Development of the Navy until 2050,” Patrushev’s statement read.

The news follows a claim made by Ukrainian internal affairs minister Anton Gerashchenko in May that Moscow is looking to appeal the International Court of Justice over the ‘suppression of the rights of Russian speakers’ in the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

“The foreign ministry pretends that negotiations ‘have yielded no results’ and that complaints submitted to the UN and OSCE have been ignored — therefore, the Kremlin is allegedly forced to go to court,” Gerashchenko wrote on X.

He continued: “The scheme is not new. Before the 2008 war in Georgia, Russia spent years talking about the ‘genocide of Ossetians,’ distributing passports to residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and then used the claim of ‘protecting Russian citizens’ as a formal justification for invasion.”