This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world.

I'm Farid Zakaria, coming to you from New York.

On the program, the world came to New York this week for the UN General Assembly,

as Vladimir Putin threatened from afar, an even more dangerous phase of his war on Ukraine.

Just today, President Putin has made overt nuclear threats against Europe.

I talked with the President of Finland, who knows Putin well.

I also sat down with the President of South Korea to ask about the threat from his neighbor to the North

who had just declared itself a nuclear state.

Also, his job's burn, protest rage and chance of death to the dictator to ring out in Iran.

After a woman dies in police custody there.

What will come of the demonstrations? I will ask an expert.

But first, here's my take.

Let's not play down what has happened this week. The leader of the world's largest nuclear power publicly threatened to use nuclear weapons.

In an address in Moscow on Wednesday, Vladimir Putin declared that Russia would use all weapons systems available to us to defend the country.

He emphasized,

this is not a bluff. It might be. Putin's threat is at odds with traditional Soviet military doctrine which once ruled out first use.

Under his leadership, the Russian military now contemplates scenarios in which it could use nuclear weapons.

But Putin knows that the West has powerful nuclear weapons of its own.

And he knows that the doctrine of mutual-earshore destruction has prevented any power from deploying them since 1945.

Moreover, these kinds of threats must rattle China, India and all those countries that have been trying to steer a course between Russia and the West.

But what does it tell us that Putin decided to make his statement anyway?

That the war is going very badly for him.

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