Russia demands withdrawal of US nuclear arms from Europe

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) — Russia on Wednesday demanded that the US remove all its nuclear weapons from Europe and dismantle the infrastructure for their deployment.

US nuclear arms create "the most serious security problem on the continent," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a news conference in Moscow.

"Our demands in this regard remain unchanged, they include the withdrawal of all American nuclear weapons from Europe, as well as dismantling the infrastructure there for their deployment," Zakharova stressed.

This came after NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said allied nations had begun consultations on the need to put nuclear weapons on alert. He told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph that the US and its European allies would be renewing their nuclear arsenals.

Zakharova also expressed concern over Japanese plans to participate in US military exercises, including pilot training to carry out missions on nuclear weapons carriers.

She accused Washington of using Japan and South Korea against Russia and China, adding that the act of working out scenarios of a geopolitical armed conflict with the use of nuclear arms provokes further tensions, undermines peace and stability, and pushes the region to the brink of nuclear catastrophe.

Calling US policy on the Korean Peninsula "aggressive," she argued that Washington is trying "to bring another region into a state of absolute chaos, to turn it into the Middle East 2."

"This would be great for them, because these are new contracts for the US military-industrial complex, another opportunity to show their citizens some kind of exclusivity, the ability to operate inside this chaos, to raise the stakes in international affairs," she said.

Zakharova also warned that any potential threats to eastern Russian borders "will be met with adequate measures by Moscow to strengthen its defense capability."

- France's decision to sell Caesar howitzers to Armenia

In addition, Zakharova took aim at a contract by France to sell Caesar self-propelled artillery systems to Armenia, signed Monday by the two sides' defense ministers in Paris.

"Paris provokes another round of armed confrontation in the South Caucasus. This is another step," she said.

Zakharova accused France of seeking to use existing disputes in the region as "a tool to achieve its own opportunistic goals," noting that she was speaking not only about Paris' interests as a state but also about its goals as a "conductor of NATO ideology."

On Tuesday, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry slammed the move by France, saying it was "further evidence of France's provocative activities in the South Caucasus region."