The General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation named the conditions under which Russia can deliver a nuclear strike against the enemy. Major General Andrei Sterlin, chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and Alexander Khryapin, a leading researcher at the Center for Military-Strategic Research of the Military Academy of the General Staff, told about this in an interview with Krasnaya Zvezda.
According to experts, Russia can inflict a nuclear strike on the enemy upon receipt of information about an attack on Russia or the territory of its allies by enemy ballistic missiles. Secondly, a nuclear response will follow the use of any weapons of mass destruction – “an attempt to destroy the state.”
In addition, the military noted that after the termination of START-3 in February 2021, the situation in the world will become more complicated. At the same time, the United States does not offer solutions to extend the contract.
“We emphasize that this is an extremely dangerous path, because the world will again, as in the second half of the 20th century, balance on the brink of a global nuclear catastrophe,” the publication says.
The stability of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) are also at risk.
On July 10, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the risks of a nuclear confrontation have seriously increased recently. Russia, he said, has repeatedly noted that there can be no winners in a nuclear collision.
However, in February 2018, the United States adopted a new doctrine according to which it reserves the right to preemptive nuclear strike. In addition, Washington completed the modernization of the country’s nuclear forces and began developing new low-yield missiles.