Sergei Naryshkin, the Director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, gave an interview published Nov. 20 with the Russian magazine National Defense, remarking that President Putin’s statement on the amendments to Russia’s new nuclear doctrine “was met with caution by the West.”
“They understand that the adjustments announced by V.V. Putin largely devalued the efforts of the U.S. and NATO to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on our country, and the planned expansion of the list of grounds for the use of nuclear weapons effectively excludes the possibility of victory over the Russian Armed Forces on the battlefield.
“Our enemies are forced to admit that the Russian President’s determination to firmly defend the country’s fundamental interests by all available means narrows the room for maneuver for Washington and Brussels. Attempts by individual NATO allies to participate in supporting possible long-range strikes with Western weapons deep into Russian territory will not go unpunished.
“The military-political elites of the West are becoming increasingly aware of the seriousness of Russia’s intentions and the need for greater restraint in their actions in order to avoid getting involved in a direct military conflict with our country, which could lead to catastrophic consequences for them,” Naryshkin told National Defense, in translation.
He also commented on the increasing weakness of the West, as well as the weakening of the dollar as a “universal currency, but everyone understands that the future belongs to new units of account,” and contrasted it to the efforts by countries now under fire from the Western alliance to build a Eurasian security architecture. Naryshkin stressed: “It seems that the formation of a Eurasian security architecture is the most meaningful way out of the nuclear impasse, to which the world is being pushed by Euro-Atlantic elites fixated on confrontation. We know that this vision is shared not only in Asia. This is also understood by the remaining healthy forces in Europe, which, in the conditions of total censorship, simply do not yet dare to call things by their proper names.”
