Russian lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky, long known for his fiery threats and outlandish bluster, has some advice for American voters: choose Donald Trump or there will be nuclear war.
Zhirinovsky, who has likened himself to the U.S. Republican candidate, said in an interview published on October 12 that a vote for Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton would result in war.
"Americans voting for a president on November 8 must realize that they are voting for peace on planet Earth if they vote for Trump. But if they vote for Hillary, it's war. It will be a short movie," he was quoted by Reuters as saying. "There will be Hiroshimas and Nagasakis everywhere."
Zhirinovsky, who heads the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, has a long reputation for making xenophobic, sometime racist or belligerent, statements. Many Russians view him with benign bemusement, and his party regularly joins in rubber-stamping Kremlin-backed legislation in the Russian parliament.
In the past, he has proposed building a barbed-wire fence along parts of southern Russia, where many Muslim Russians live, a proposal that has echoes of Trump's call for a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
He has also called for Russia to take Alaska back from the United States.