MOSCOW, April 17. /TASS/. The US was ready to launch a nuclear strike on Russia at the start of the 21st century, but it was prevented by the restoration of the Russian nuclear triad, Mikhail Kovalchuk, president of National Research Center Kurchatov Institute, said on Rossiya-24 television on Monday.

He said "all the conditions" for a strike on Russia were in place: The US allowed for the possibility of a pre-emptive attack, was developing tactical nuclear weapons and "bombed Yugoslavia without a second thought."

"Then our Western partners relaxed. They decided that everything was fine, and they were essentially dividing our country. <... > They only had to reign in [Russia’s] nuclear potential. I must say that, unbeknownst to them, our president brought it all back (the nuclear triad - TASS)," Kovalchuk said.

He also called attention to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly in 2018, in which the head of state announced the testing of the latest strategic weapons. The president of the Kurchatov Institute conceded that before then, he had been convinced the United States was ready to use nuclear weapons against Russia.

"I had a very strong feeling, a certainty that the Americans, without hesitation, as they did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would drop nuclear bombs on us," he said.

"He (Putin - TASS) started make it clear that there was a real possibility of a retaliatory strike at the slightest inkling of an attack against us. This works," Kovalchuk said.

The institute’s president also said nuclear weapons were used against a real enemy only once: in August 1945, and then the United States went unpunished.

"It was used senselessly, it was only an act of intimidation towards Stalin," the scientist said.