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Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's comment on US nuclear arms activities

13 June 2023 20:02
1168-13-06-2023

We noted the critical remarks by Alicia Sanders-Zakre, the Policy and Research Coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. She spoke about US nuclear arms activities, and specifically, the deployment of over a hundred nuclear warheads on US bases in five European countries.

As we are seeing, the international public continues to be concerned about Washington's pernicious practice of deploying nuclear weapons outside its national territory. Moreover, it is doing this in countries that have non-nuclear status according to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Obviously, this practice, which has been going on for many decades, is a destabilising factor for maintaining security in Europe and strategic stability throughout the world.

Washington is doing all it can against this background to cover up its irresponsible behaviour and lay the blame at the wrong door. This is why it is making hypocritical, groundless accusations against Russia and Belarus in connection with their cooperation in the military nuclear field.

We have already replied to these accusations, but we would like to recall some facts and remind our readers how these events developed.

It was the NATO countries that introduced the concept of so-called "joint nuclear missions" and they have been following this for some decades. US nuclear weapons deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey, are at the centre of this concept. These countries provide aircraft for the delivery of American warheads to targets while their military personnel are trained to handle nuclear arms and take part in operations on using them in combat.

We have been stating the need to return all US nuclear weapons to their national territory at every multilateral disarmament conference we attend, but Washington and its allies ignore our demands. Moreover, nuclear bombs and their carriers are subjected to large-scale modernisation during said missions, which raises this potential risk to a fundamentally new level. Meanwhile, according to its doctrinal documents, Washington has been lowering the threshold of using nuclear arms and shifting emphasis to "limited use scenarios."

We are bound to be concerned over the recent appeals to expand the geography of stockpiled US nuclear air bombs in Europe by moving them to the borders of the Union State of Russia and Belarus.

Under these conditions of a West-unleashed total hybrid war against Russia and the US and NATO-declared intention to inflict "a strategic defeat" upon us, it would have been the height of levity and unreasonable self-confidence to hope for the absence of any military-technical countermeasures. The necessary measures were taken. We reserve the right to take additional measures to ensure the security of Russia and its allies. All our actions conform to international law and do not contradict our international commitments in any way. In this context, we would like to recall once again that, unlike in NATO's case, Russian-Belarusian nuclear military cooperation is taking place in the framework of the Union State that has a single territory and a common military doctrine.