‘No winners in nuclear war’ – Lavrov

Moscow is convinced that a nuclear conflict cannot be won and should not be launched under any circumstances, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the ‘60 Minutes’ TV show on Wednesday. That does not mean that anyone can test Russia’s patience, the minister warned, adding that his country would not hesitate to defend its interests with all available means.

Russia has “never started a discussion on… whether nuclear arms can be used,” the minister said. Moscow wants nuclear powers to once again officially acknowledge “there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be triggered” – something that US President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev did in the 1980s, according to Lavrov.

Russia first put forward a corresponding initiative during talks between President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden and then presented it to the five permanent UN Security Council members in 2021.

All statements that “considered various scenarios of a nuclear war possible” came solely from Western capitals, the minister said. He particularly referred to the recent statements of US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) spokesman Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan. Last month, the admiral said Washington was ready to launch nuclear strikes but would only do so “on terms that are most acceptable to the US.”

According to Lavrov, Russia requested that the US clarify those statements but did not receive any “reasonable” answers. Moscow has no intention of “turning up the heat” on the issue of the use of nuclear weapons or its consequences and would gladly do anything to save people in the West the trouble of building nuclear bunkers, he said.

Russia’s use of its state-of-the-art nuclear-capable Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile system against a target in Ukraine led to a fourfold increase in the number of Americans looking for nuclear bunkers, the CEO of a Texas-based survival shelter company claimed in mid-December. The missile used in the strike was equipped with conventional warheads.

“We are firmly sticking to a position that there can be no winners in a nuclear war,” he said. The minister still cautioned Russia’s adversaries against provoking Moscow into taking drastic steps to protect its interests.

“I would advise anyone against testing our patience, our determination to defend our legitimate national interests with all means available,” Lavrov said. “They that have ears to hear, let them hear; they that have brains to understand, let them understand.”

Speaking at a meeting of top Russian Defense Ministry officials last week, Putin stated that the West’s active military support to Ukraine was pushing Russia to the point where it could not help but retaliate. The president accused Washington of trying “to weaken our country and inflict a strategic defeat” on Moscow by pumping Ukraine full of money and weapons.