ILLUSTRATIVE IMAGE: The building of Russian Foreign Ministry
The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed hope that the upcoming exercises with non-strategic nuclear weapons will cool down the “hotheads” in the West and help them realize the strategic risks of being drawn into a direct armed confrontation with Russia.
The Russian Foreign Ministry published the following statement immediately after the British and French ambassadors left the main building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow, where they were handed a note of protest.
Earlier on May 6, French and British ambassadors were summoned by the Russian Foreign Ministry amid the escalating tensions over the situation in Ukraine and public calls of Western diplomats for more active NATO involvement in attacks on Russia.
Just recently, representatives of the UK and France made a series of statements regarding further involvement of NATO states in the conflict against Russia. In particular, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron claimed over the weekend that Kiev “has the right” to use NATO-supplied missiles to attack targets deep inside Russia; while the French leadership still fools around with the idea of deployment of NATO military contingent in Ukraine. The French President repeatedly tried to describe this idea as a “strategic ambiguity”, while in fact, this concept would become an apparent step towards an open full-scale war between Russia and NATO member states.
The translation of the full statement published by the Russian Foreign Ministry (original in Russian):
Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation in connection with the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation conducting exercises to practice the deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons
Amid the upcoming Russian military exercises aimed to practice the deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons, we note that the drills should be considered in the context of recent bellicose statements by Western officials and sharply destabilizing actions taken by a number of NATO countries aimed at increasing military pressure on the Russian Federation and creating additional threats to the security of our country in connection with the conflict in and around Ukraine.
We are referring primarily to the openly declared support support and direct assistance to terrorist actions against Russia carried out by the Kiev regime using increasingly advanced weapons transferred by the West. Since the deliberately chosen target of such attacks are often civilian facilities, this leads to numerous civilian casualties. However, this does not deter the sponsors of the clique in Kiev, who are pushing it to commit new crimes. For example, the British Foreign Secretary, D. Cameron, and representatives of some other NATO capitals directly declare that Ukraine has the right to target the territory of Russia with weapons supplied to it from the West.
In addition to the British and French long-range missile systems that have long been used in Ukraine, we emphasize those versions of American missiles of the ATACMS family that have recently been supplied to Kiev and are also capable of hitting targets deep in Russian territory.
At the same time, in an attempt to increase multifaceted missile threats to our country, the United States has openly and explicitly embarked on the course of deploying ground-based systems with intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles in various regions of the world. These missiles were previously prohibited under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Having filibustered Russian initiatives aimed to maintain the viability of this agreement, which envisioned the elimination of counter concerns on the basis of mutual verification measures, Washington purposefully destroyed the Treaty, which for many years served as one of the pillars of international security and strategic stability. After that, the U.S. immediately intensified the development and testing of missile systems of the above-mentioned class, as well as began to form specialized military units focused on specific features of different regions and launched the creation of the necessary infrastructure. Now the U.S. has begun the transfer of the relevant missile systems to Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, allegedly for their deployment during the exercises with allies, which indicates that the production and “testing” of these weapons is in full swing.
We declare expressly that whenever and wherever U.S.-made land-based intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles appear, we reserve the right to react in a mirror-image manner, which would mean ending Russia’s unilateral moratorium on the deployment of these systems. In response to U.S. actions, Russia will intensify the development and begin production of similar missile systems. This process will not take long, given the previously announced R&D and the accumulated experience of the Russian military-industrial complex. When making potential decisions on the deployment of such weapons, we leave the area of their deployment to our discretion.
In the near future, US-made F-16 multirole aircraft are expected to appear on the Ukrainian battlefield. As has been repeatedly pointed out on the Russian side, we cannot ignore the fact that these aircraft are dual-capable platforms – non-nuclear and nuclear. For many years, aircraft of this type have formed the basis of the aircraft fleet used in the so-called “joint nuclear missions” of NATO. Regardless of the exact modification in which these aircraft will be delivered to Ukraine, we will regard them as carriers of nuclear weapons and consider this step by the United States and NATO as a deliberate provocation.
Therefore, we draw particular attention to the statements by the Polish leadership that the question of the need to deploy American nuclear weapons on Polish territory has been directly raised by Warsaw to Washington, and in a practical way.
The statements by French President Macron about the possibility of sending French and other NATO troops to Ukraine cannot fail to impress with their irresponsibility and thoughtlessness. Moreover, the Western media shared information that a certain number of mercenaries from the French Foreign Legion were already deployed in Ukraine. It is difficult to perceive this otherwise as a manifestation of readiness and intention to enter into direct armed confrontation with Russia, which would mean a head-on military clash between the nuclear powers. We have also recorded a series of steps on the French side, including military exercises and other activities that are likely to back up Macron’s statements with a demonstration of nuclear capabilities of Paris.
These and some other actions of the member States of the North Atlantic Bloc actually indicate that they are consciously leading to a further escalation of the Ukrainian crisis towards an open military clash between NATO countries and Russia as part of the realization of a hostile course to inflict a “strategic defeat” on our country.
We declare that the aggressive desire of NATO countries to undermine the security of the Russian Federation is gaining momentum. That’s why we should recall that the guaranteed protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country is the highest priority of Russian military security policy, including the aspect of nuclear deterrence.
The regime in Kiev and its Western masterminds should finally realize that their reckless steps are bringing the situation closer and closer to the accumulation of an explosive “critical mass”. The military dangers thus created and the resulting threats to our country are clearly outlined in the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation and the Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the field of nuclear deterrence.
The assessments outlined above formed the basis for the decision taken to hold Russian military exercises involving part of the forces and means of nuclear deterrence, which are intended to send a sobering signal to the West and its puppets in Kiev.
We look forward on this to cool down the “hotheads” in Western capitals, help them realize the possible catastrophic consequences of the strategic risks they are generating, and deter them both from assisting the Kiev regime in its terrorist actions and from being drawn into a direct armed confrontation with Russia.
