Moscow is still waiting for a serious proposal from the Biden Administration on arms control. In the meantime, what it won’t do is disarm unilaterally. “At this stage, possessing nuclear arms represents the only possible response to very specific external threats that are not only weakening but, on the contrary, are increasingly growing,” Russian ambassador to Japan Mikhail Galuzin said at a roundtable meeting on nuclear disarmament in Hiroshima, reports TASS. “An immediate renunciation of nuclear arms would weaken our country’s security sharply and heighten the risk of a major military confrontation with the West, which refuses to recognize our basic security interests.”
Galuzin said Russia did share commitments to action towards achieving a non-nuclear world. “However, steps in such a sensitive sphere should not undermine global stability or deepen international fragmentation,” he said. Any real progress towards nuclear disarmament could only be made using gradual, calibrated measures that do not hamper either equal security or efforts to maintain a strategic balance, he added.
Galuzin also rejected speculation that Russia would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. “There are many allegations around Russia’s position, with speculations concerning possible use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine. But our doctrine on this matter is utterly clear: hypothetically, we don’t rule out nuclear response but only following an aggression with the use of weapons of mass destruction or with the use of conventional arms when the mere existence of the state is at stake. Our actions on the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine have nothing to do with these scenarios,” he said.
Galuzin noted that the US is the only country that has used nuclear weapons in war and that there was no military necessity for it. At the same time, NATO’s “hostile expansion” and the creation of “an anti-Russian stronghold in Ukraine” crossed Russia’s red lines and “directly infringed upon Russia’s national security interests,” he said. “Having confronted Russia’s resolute rebuff to this expansion, the United States and its allies have plunged into a tough hybrid confrontation with our country, dangerously balancing on the edge of direct armed conflict,” he noted.
Any armed confrontation between nuclear powers must be prevented, as “it is fraught with an escalation into a nuclear level, Galuzin warned.” “This is what Russia warns against concerning potential consequences of NATO’s direct aggression against our country in the context of the Ukrainian crisis. Such a step may trigger one of two extraordinary scenarios described in our doctrine,” he said, adding that Russia doesn’t want that. “But if Western countries opt to test our resoluteness, Russia will not retreat. This is not a language of threats, it is a logic of deterrence,” he emphasized.
