MOSCOW – The risk of a nuclear exchange does exist, but Moscow will do everything possible to prevent it, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Saturday in an interview with TASS.
“We will do the most we can to prevent this catastrophic scenario,” Ryabkov said. “However, not everything depends on us in this case,” he added.
When asked whether Moscow was considering a resumption of nuclear weapons tests, the senior Russian diplomat said the possibility remains an open question.
“Let me simply say that the situation is quite difficult. It is constantly being considered in all its components and in all its aspects.”
In September, Ryabkov referred to President Vladimir Putin as having said that Russia would not conduct a test as long as the United States refrained from carrying one out.
This month, Putin lowered the threshold governing the country’s nuclear doctrine in response to what Moscow sees as escalation by Western countries in the 33-month-old conflict.
Under the new terms, Russia could consider a nuclear strike in response to a conventional attack on itself or its allies that “creates a critical threat to their sovereignty and/or territorial integrity.”
