NIZHNY NOVGOROD, June 11. /TASS/. Russia is not in a nuclear alliance with China and North Korea, hence their nuclear arsenals should be counted separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after a BRICS ministerial meeting.
"As for the arsenals of China and North Korea and Russia’s strategic arsenals, we are not members of an alliance in any way," he said when asked if their nuclear stockpiles should be summarized.
According to the top Russian diplomat, the only thing that unites these three countries is that they "have been proclaimed the targets of the United States and their allies’ aggressive policy."
"When we said that we consider the nuclear arsenals of NATO member states as a common arsenal, we meant that at certain points, the United States, when it ruined all the basic principles necessary for signing a treaty on strategic offensive weapons, sought to persuade us that the war they are waging against Russia by the hands of Ukrainians would not be an obstacle for resuming dialogue on strategic stability," Lavrov said, adding that after NATO united against Russia, Moscow "cannot but take into account the nuclear arsenals of France and Great Britain, which are among NATO’s leaders in terms of anti-Russian actions."