MOSCOW, April 4. /TASS/. Russia has both the military potential and willpower to defend its sovereignty and ward off any threats, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on the Rossiya-24 TV channel on Tuesday.
"We have - let me emphasize this - both the military resources and the political will. We have determination. Our society is consolidated on the platform of guaranteed protection of our sovereignty for warding off any threats and preventing encroachments on our territorial integrity," he said.
"As for the use of nuclear weapons, we have gone over this many times already. We are not mincing words here, either. Our adversaries simply have to be realistic about what is going on around them, and to refrain from any escalation or provocations against us. Because otherwise something may happen that for now can be discussed only hypothetically," Ryabkov said.
He stressed that the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus was a natural response to the growing challenges and risks for Russian security.
"There should be no illusions. Russia has a very wide range of forces and means to ensure its own security in any situation. Nuclear deterrence has always been and is still present in our system of military planning and in the general concept of deterring our adversaries," Ryabkov said.
According to the senior diplomat, the West ignored the opportunity for building a guaranteed system of global security.
"There has been much talk in recent years about Russia placing greater emphasis on so-called non-nuclear deterrence. But the US-led collective West has not just ignored all these warnings, signals, and calls for using the opportunities to build a guaranteed security system on a different basis. It has dismissed them outright," Ryabkov continued. "Now we are in a situation of military confrontation. A hybrid war is being waged against Russia. And its forms are such that it is difficult to find parallels in the past. In some aspects they simply do not exist. We cannot be indifferent about this."