Many "Nostradamus predictions" are floating around the Internet and tabloid newspapers lately, claiming to be about Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine leading to World War III. 

Having already "predicted" famine so bad that humanity would start eating each other due to famine in 2022 (“No abbots, monks, no novices to learn; Honey shall cost far more than candle-wax. So high the price of wheat, That man is stirred. His fellow man to eat in his despair.”) Nostradamus supposedly has more in store for us with seven months of global warfare.

The passage of Nostradamus which has people nervous reads "seven months the Great War, people dead of evil-doing. Rouen, Evreux shall not fall to the King".

The British tabloid the Daily Star speculates that this "could be seen to allude to a larger World War 3 conflict stemming from the troubles in Ukraine arising next year," adding "the seven-month timeline on the conflict may initially seem like a cause for celebration, but with the terrifying nuclear arsenals of countries including America and Russia – perhaps it's best to err on the side of caution."

According to another prediction, a famine is apparently on the way where wheat prices get so high that people will start to eat each other, which you could link to World War III if you were into that sort of thing.

“No abbots, monks, no novices to learn; Honey shall cost far more than candle-wax. So high the price of wheat, That man is stirred. His fellow man to eat in his despair.” 

So was Nostradamus really some all-powerful wizard, cursed to predict the future?

No.

The great thing about predicting the future is the vaguer you are, the more right you can seem about a larger number of topics. It's why horoscopes don't say things like "look out for that Lego brick little Daniel left on the stairs on Tuesday or you're in for a world of pain," instead opting for sentences like "the Sun in the harmonic aspect will make you experience great changes", which is so vague you can read anything into it and is really unhelpful with the Lego situation.

Nostradamus was especially good at creating predictions so loose that eventually, someone would be able to ascribe it to a not-too-dissimilar real-world event. They are what's known as "postdictions", in that you could not possibly guess what he was predicting before the event happened – but after the event, you can find a passage that makes it look like he'd known all along. Even then, they are not that accurate.

For instance, a passage that is touted as predicting the rise of Hitler would in no way warn you of Hitler himself:

“From the depths of the West of Europe, A young child will be born of poor people, He who by his tongue will seduce a great troop; His fame will increase towards the realm of the East.”

Were you to read it beforehand, you could maybe guess that he meant someone famous will be born in Western Europe, but that's about it. Once Hitler had risen to power, people decided he must have been referring to Hitler and declared Nostrodamus once again to be an incredible prediction wizard thanks to this incredibly vague passage.

So in answer to the title, what Nostrodamus actually predicted about Putin and World War III is: nothing.