The risks of a direct military confrontation between the two nuclear powers - Russia and the US - are steadily growing, Vladimir Yermakov, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department, told TASS in an interview.
"If the United States continues to follow the current course of confrontation with Russia with a constant raising of the stakes on the verge of sliding into direct armed conflict, the fate of START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty - TASS) may be a foregone conclusion," Yermakov said. - "However, if things develop according to the worst scenario - that is, if Washington takes the situation to a military clash between the two major nuclear powers - we need to worry not about saving START, but about the fate of the whole world."
"This once again confirms the fact that the most acute threat today is not so much related to the dynamics of incentives for a massive first strike, which agreements such as START are largely designed to cure, but rather to the danger of nuclear escalation as a result of direct military confrontation between nuclear powers," Yermakov explained. "And these risks, to our deepest regret, are steadily growing," he stressed.
"That is why we constantly point to the danger of the actions of the United States and NATO, which seem to have sunk into the illusion of impunity and played with such chimeras as 'escalation control' and 'escalation dominance'", the diplomat continued. - "We keep sending sobering signals to the West about the need to prevent a catastrophe." However, as Yermakov pointed out, the West "remains deaf to the calls" and even "maliciously distorts them for propaganda purposes."
The department director, speaking of opportunities for improvement, stressed that "the US should immediately take concrete steps to de-escalate and in practice completely abandon its hostile line to undermine Russia's security." "There is simply no other way to reverse the negative trend," Yermakov concluded.
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Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from TASS