ONE of Putin’s propaganda puppets has demanded the tyrant unleash a huge nuclear explosion on the West to halt support for Ukraine.

His leading ‘Zombie-in-Chief’ commentator said the mega nuke would wipe out all smartphones, setting the world back by 30 years.

Margarita Simonyan, head of Kremlin-backed media outlet RT, said it would “disable all radio electronics, all digital – all the satellites”.

The pro-war fanatic, 43, said the West “will not backpedal” on Ukraine “unless it is painful for them”.

She suggested an explosion over Siberia – which would not cause a nuclear winter – would scare the West into halting backing for Kyiv.

The hardline Putin loyalist nicknamed “Goebbels in a skirt” claimed it would do so without unleashing “monstrous radiation” in Europe or the US.

But she gave a chilling warning that “A nuclear ultimatum is becoming more and more imminent – and more and more impossible to avoid”.

Simonyan said the blast, which would render all iPhones and iPads useless, would take us “back to the year of 1993 or so, corded phones”. 

She added: “I’ll tell you. It was a wonderful life.”

It would be the “most humane” and “harmless” form of nuclear blackmail, the fanatic claimed, but her outburst appeared too extreme even for her paymasters in the Kremlin. 

Putin’s spokesman said Russia “at present” had “not left the regime of abandoning nuclear tests”.

“I don’t think such discussions are possible now from an official point of view,” he said. 

He added that Simonyan did not “always” reflect Moscow’s official position. 

The propagandist is editor-in-chief of the Russian state-controlled broadcaster Russia Today (RT), and state-owned media group Rossiya Segodnya.

She is sanctioned for her close links to Putin by Britain, the EU, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, Ukraine, and New Zealand.

Simonyan, whose channel is dubbed the ‘Zombie box’, earns £500,000 a year from public funds, four times as much as Putin’s official salary. 

She predicted that Putin would get his own way in Ukraine and send the world back three decades with the enormous nuclear hit.

This should be “a nuclear explosion, hundreds of [miles] away on our territory, somewhere over Siberia,” she said.

“There will be nothing on earth, nothing so terrible, neither nuclear winter, which everyone is afraid of, nor monstrous radiation, which will kill everyone around, and those who are not killed will die within 10 years from cancer,” she said. 

“That’s not going to happen. What is? 

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“Well, it’s going to disable all radio electronics, all digital. All the satellites. 

“This is the camera they’re filming me on right now. This is the phone that’s lying next to me. We’re going to go back to the year of 1993 or so…”

She said her children were not allowed smartphones or iPads – and often complained to her. 

But after her proposed doomsday detonation “at least I won’t have to explain to my kids why everyone else has gadgets – and they don’t”.

One expert said her thesis didn’t work scientifically and compared it to a disaster film plot line.

A nuclear EMP (nuclear electromagnetic pulse) is a burst of electromagnetic radiation that is created by a nuclear explosion like the one Simonyan is suggesting.

They can damage or permanently break electronics.

Andrei Ozharovsky, physicist engineer at the Radioactive Waste Safety programme, told the RTVi channel that Simonyan must have “watched some disaster films, where people are stuck in a traffic jam and cars no longer start. 

“This is true. Ordinary household electrical appliances, car starters, mobile phones, computers will indeed be damaged within a certain radius.”

Yet an explosion over Siberia “will not disable electronics in America, Europe and anywhere else in the world”.

It might, however, harm Russians living in Siberia. 

State television is a widely used weapon of propaganda in Russia, used to control citizens amid the war in Ukraine.

Simonyan, who has three young children, often describes Putin as “the boss”, The Times reports.

The despot ruler has used the threat of nuclear weapons several times against the West in recent months.

In June he warned his hypersonic “Satan-2” intercontinental ballistic missiles would soon be deployed for combat duty.

The 208-ton hypersonic Satan-2 rocket measures 116 feet in length and can be loaded with 15 light nuclear warheads at once.

It was designed to carry out nuclear strikes in countries thousands of miles away in the US and Europe.

Yury Borisov, head of the Russian Space Agency, then announced they had been placed on duty just weeks ago.

The “unstoppable” intercontinental missile system could “sink the UK” and is the size of a 14-storey tower block.

And with an operational range of up to 11,180 miles, the deadly missile is reported to have no equivalent in the West in terms of the terror it could unleash.