Sergei Ryabkov told reporters in Moscow that he hopes NATO understands the seriousness of the situation around Russia’s plans to deploy its nuclear weapons in Belarus. “Hopefully, NATO members and, most importantly, those politicians and officials from leading NATO countries who lay claim to global leadership based on their own self-formulated rules and directives will appropriately assess how serious the situation is,” he said. “We can see that the serious signals we have made and our actions have only been ‘scratching the surface’ in these countries.” Our signals “have not even left any external imprint on the position of the aforementioned bloc” — that is, NATO. Ryabkov drew the ominous conclusion: “So, then, one must reckon with the changing reality.”