MOSCOW, September 5. /TASS/. Russia will view the move to return US nuclear weapons to British soil as a step toward escalation, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing.
"If this step is ever made, we will view it as escalation, as a step toward escalation that would take things to a direction that is quite opposite to addressing the pressing issue of pulling all nuclear weapons out of European countries," she warned, commenting on reports by British media saying that the United States may return its nukes to UK soil after 15 years.
Zakharova slammed what she said was a destabilizing practice as purely anti-Russian as she said it envisaged joint planning and practicing regularly for nuclear attacks on targets in Russia from non-nuclear European countries.
The diplomat said Moscow would have to take countermeasures in response in order to "safeguard security interests of our country and its allies." She also pledged more efforts to demand that all US nuclear weapons be returned to US soil before destroying the infrastructure enabling it to deploy nukes in Europe.