Russia is warning its Western adversaries that it feels obliged to boost its nuclear deterrent due to their "escalatory" course, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Ryabkov was cited by state news agency RIA as saying that Russia was not however changing its own nuclear doctrine, which allows for the use of nuclear weapons in case of an existential threat to the state, Reuters reported.
"At the moment, there are no changes in this regard. But the situation itself is changing, so how the basic documents in this area relate to the needs of ensuring our security is the subject of constant analysis," Ryabkov said.
"We warn our opponents that their escalatory trajectory confronts us of course with the need to take steps that actually mean strengthening our measures of deterrence."
He said exercises involving Russia's tactical nuclear weapons, announced by Moscow earlier this week, were part of those efforts.
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Russian specialists are pre-emptively planning deployment sites of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in response to US moves for deploying such weapons, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Thursday.
ReplyDelete"Undoubtedly, depending on the situation, as was stressed on many occasions, upon the emergence of similar US-made systems in any region of the world, and in this case, we look, first of all, at Europe and the Asia-Pacific region," the senior Russian diplomat said.
"We will carry out our deployment in a way to effectively counter these new threats. Correspondingly, specialists are carrying out preliminary pre-emptive planning," Ryabkov said, commenting on the preparation of potential sites for deploying Russian intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in response to US destabilizing moves.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said earlier that Moscow reserved the right to a tit-for-tat response to the deployment of US-made ground-based intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in any part of the world, which would signify "the cessation of the unilateral Russian moratorium on deploying such weapons."