Reportedly, Russian foreign ministry’s head of nuclear non-proliferation Vladimir Yermakov on April 25, said that there has been a steady growth in the direct military confrontation between the world’s two nuclear powers – the United States and Russia. The senior Russian diplomat was quoted as a warning about the nuclear confrontation by the TASS news agency.
The deliberately protracted Ukraine-Russian war is witnessing intensifying rivalry between the US and Russia which is growing by each passing day. It has kept the region in a limbo. A constant fear of direct military confrontation between the two and abandoning the middle ground has raised skepticisms.
Since the start of its invasion on Ukraine 14 months ago, Moscow has issued regular charges against the U.S. and what it calls “the collective West” for raising the risks of a nuclear war, rhetoric intended to deter Kyiv’s allies.
“If the United States continues to follow its current course of confrontation with Russia, with the stakes constantly escalating on the verge of sliding into direct armed conflict, then the fate of START (nuclear arms treaty) may be a foregone conclusion,” Yermakov said.
The US told Russia in March that it will cease exchanging some data on its nuclear forces following Moscow’s refusal to do so, calling it a response to Russia’s suspending participation in the New START treaty.
Yermakov did not provide details of the alleged US confrontational approach in the excerpts from the TASS interview published so far. Here are some of his statements in this regard.
“However, in the worst-case scenario, i.e. if Washington drives the situation to a military clash between the strongest nuclear powers, then it is not the fate of the New START but the fate of the entire world that will be a concern,” Yermakov said.
“This once again confirms that the most pressing threat today is connected not with the dynamic of stimuli for the first massive strike, which is supposed to be curbed by agreements like the New START, but with a danger of nuclear escalation as a result of a direct military confrontation between nuclear powers. And, to our deepest regrets, these risks keep growing,” he added.
“This is exactly why we constantly point to the danger of US and NATO’s actions, who, it seems, have believed in the illusion of impunity and got carried away with such chimeras as ‘escalation control’ and ‘escalatory domination’. We continue sending sobering signals to the West that a catastrophe must be prevented,” the diplomat said.
However, he stated the West “remains deaf to the calls,” and even “maliciously distorts them for propaganda purposes.”
The diplomat stated that, for improving the situation, “the US must immediately take concrete steps on de-escalation and to abolish the hostile course towards undermining Russia’s security in practice.”
“There is simply no other way to reverse the negative trend,” Yermakov added.
Moscow and Beijing will assess the West’s potential involvement in the global expansion of the US anti-missile system, which “clearly undermines strategic stability,” he added.
