MOSCOW, December 20. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he regrets growing global tendency of underestimating the risks of a nuclear war.

"I just thought somehow the danger of such a development in the world is somehow fading into the background," he said. "It seems impossible or something  not so  important. In the meantime, should anything like that happen, God forbid, this may result in the death of civilization and, possibly, the entire planet."

President Putin hopes mankind will have enough common sense to prevent a third world war from ever happening.

Putin has warned against lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, emphasizing that this would trigger a global disaster.

"There is one more circumstance, to which I should draw attention: there is a trend of lowering the threshold for the use, there are ideas to create small-yield nuclear warheads, and this is already not a global use, but a tactical use, and Western analysts already voice these ideas that there is nothing dangerous, and they could be used," Putin told the annual news conference. "But this lowering of the threshold may spark a global nuclear disaster," Putin warned.