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Russia seeks to reduce nuclear risks — deputy foreign minister

Sergey Ryabkov added that at the same time, the United States continues to exert increasing pressure on Russia and on some other nuclear-armed countries

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov Donat Sorokin/TASS

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov

© Donat Sorokin/TASS

MOSCOW, December 18. /TASS/. Russia seeks to reduce nuclear risks, while Washington does not want to give up pressure on Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in a discussion on the platform of the Valdai international discussion club.

"We advocate something different: the creation of conditions for comprehensive and multidimensional work to reduce strategic risks by minimizing the conflict potential in the relations among nuclear powers," Ryabkov said. "The United States has been trying to minimize military dangers and unpleasant surprises for itself, but at the same time it continues to exert increasing pressure on us and on some other nuclear-armed countries. It is absolutely not ready to consider options for easing such pressure," he pointed out.

Ryabkov remarked that in this way Washington first creates and inflates strategic risks and then tries to "manage" them to its unilateral benefit.

"For us, this is completely unacceptable," he added.

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