MOSCOW, February 5. /TASS/. Moscow is highly alarmed over the deployment of W76-2 new low-yield nuclear warheads on US submarines, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Wednesday.
"We are reacting to this with a serious concern not because we see a threat to the security of our country - this security is reliably ensured as a result of the efforts that were taken with regard to the armament and with regard to developing advanced weapon systems, but from the viewpoint of doctrines and concepts, which the Americans are using in the nuclear sphere. This is very alarming," the senior Russian diplomat said.
The deployment of low-yield charges on US strategic delivery vehicles suggests that "the pronouncements made by the American side in the declarative form about the possibility of deploying such means in a hypothetical conflict are already being embodied in the metal and items," Ryabkov said.
"This indicates that the US is really reducing the nuclear threshold and admits of a limited nuclear war for itself and the victory in that war," the deputy foreign minister said.
In this context, Moscow’s proposal to "confirm again the commitment to the well-known formula that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it must never be unleashed" is becoming especially important, the high-ranking Russian diplomat said.
Russia formally handed over this proposal to Washington back in 2018, he added.
"All the developments in their entirety and all the signs I am speaking about set us up for the need to double efforts in order to try to contain the US further drift in the dangerous direction and Washington’s further slide into the planning of absolutely inadmissible catastrophic scenarios," Ryabkov stressed.
US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood stated on Tuesday that the US Navy had started deploying W76-2 new low-yield nuclear warheads on submarines. The US Department of Defense said in a statement that it identified the requirement to modify a small number of submarine-launched ballistic missile warheads "to address the conclusion that potential adversaries, like Russia, believe that employment of low-yield nuclear weapons will give them an advantage over the United States and its allies and partners.".