As he has been doing for months now, Russian President Vladimir Putin dangled the threat of nuclear escalation on Friday. Speaking after a summit in Kyrgyzstan, Putin said he would consider adopting a first-strike reservation to Russia’s nuclear strategy.

Putin described U.S. contingency plans to launch “a strike with modern high-tech means, which should be delivered to [nuclear command and] control points, deprive the enemy of these control systems, and so on.” He added that while Russia had previously lacked the means to conduct its own strike in this manner, it could now do so via new cruise missile and hypersonic weapon systems. Putin added, “But if a potential adversary believes that it is possible to use the theory of a preemptive strike, but we do not, then this still makes us think about the threats that such ideas pose to us.”