The Russian state-run news agency TASS reports (source):
US military specialists are making European countries’ armed forces ready for using tactical nuclear weapons against Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the disarmament conference on Wednesday.
“Nuclear disarmament is hindered by the remaining presence of US non-strategic nuclear weapons in Europe and the accompanying destabilizing practice of ‘joint nuclear missions’. Within the framework of these missions NATO’s non-nuclear members in crude violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty participate in planning the use of US non-strategic nuclear weapons and are involved in mastering the corresponding skills. It should be clear to one and all that the US military thereby prepares the European countries for using tactical nuclear weapons against Russia,” Lavrov said.
“Russia has no deployed tactical nuclear weapons. Nor does it hold any training to practice methods of how to use it. We have accumulated the available warheads at central storage facilities in our national territory,” Lavrov said. “In this situation the existence in Europe of US tactical nuclear weapons ready for use is not just a Cold War rudiment, but an outspokenly aggressive stance.”
“I hope that the European citizens will manage to say a firm ‘NO’ to the deployment in their territory of weapons of mass destruction that belong to a country that had already used them once against the population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Lavrov said.
