MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/. The collective West is promoting "apparently dishonest schemes" to gain advantages by imposing new restrictions on nuclear weapons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a video address to participants in the Moscow Non-Proliferation Conference.

"The US-led ‘collective West’ is cynically complementing the deliberate destruction of balanced and equal agreements that do not suit Washington with the promotion of apparently dishonest schemes that would create advantages for the United States. Their obvious goal is to create a unilateral military advantage for themselves by setting new limits for nuclear arsenals while formalizing the aggregate Western superiority in the sphere of non-nuclear capabilities," he noted.

Lavrov stressed that "striving to attain decisive military superiority, Washington and its allies are enlarging the network of alliances directed against third countries." "They are working energetically to implement a number of highly destabilizing military-technical programmes. They include the creation of a global ballistic missile defense system coupled with the stockpiling of precision weapons for delivering preemptive and decapitation ‘global strikes,’ the forward basing of US nuclear arsenals in Europe and their destabilizing development within the framework of NATO’s ‘joint nuclear missions,’ as well as preparations to deploy weapons in space and ground-launched intermediate and shorter-range missions throughout the world," the top Russian diplomat pointed out.

He also said that Russia was deeply concerned about "the emerging partnership between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, AUKUS, which is increasingly similar to a military bloc, alongside with the growing military spending by the NATO countries and US allies, and Britain’s plans to build up its nuclear potential."