Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was interviewed by Russia’s “60 Minutes” TV program on Dec. 25, and explained Russia’s policy on nuclear war in careful detail. He also revealed that Russia had asked the Pentagon for an explanation of recent comments by high-level officials—some media suggest he was referring to Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan—calling for carrying out “limited nuclear strikes” against Russia and coming out victorious from such an “exchange,” and were brushed aside by the Pentagon saying only that the comments were insignificant.
According to the full transcript published on the Foreign Ministry website, Lavrov was asked about his Dec. 6 comment to Tucker Carlson that the world is closer than ever to nuclear war, and the reports of Americans building nuclear bunkers:
“We are prepared to take all necessary measures to ensure that American citizens and those of other Western nations do not squander money (which is not in abundance for them at present) on constructing bunkers,” Lavrov commented. He added that Russia had never initiated discussion of using nuclear weapons, and that, in fact, it was Putin who initiated the 2021 restatement by the G5 nuclear powers in which “the 1987 Gorbachev-Reagan principle was reaffirmed: there can be no victors in a nuclear war, thus it should never be instigated.”
