MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/. A statement by British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon about his country’s right to a preemptive nuclear strike if necessary deserves a tough response, and should be at best regarded as an element of a psychological war, a senior Russian parliamentarian told reporters on Monday.

Frantz Klintsevich said it won’t be an exaggeration to say "the statement by UK’s Defense Secretary Michael Fallon deserves a tough response". "This statement can be considered at best as a certain element of a psychological war that in this context looks especially disgusting," said the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council upper house’s committee for defense and security.

"Otherwise, this looks absolutely bad as a natural question arises - who is it that the UK is ready to preemptively use nuclear weapons against?" Klintsevich’s press service quoted him as saying.

Earlier on Monday, the defense secretary told BBC that the UK reserves the right to a ‘pre-emptive initial strike’.

"In the most extreme circumstances, we have made it very clear that you can’t rule out the use of nuclear weapons as a first strike," Michael Fallon said.

According to upper house’s Frantz Klintsevich, if the UK is ready to carry out a strike against a nuclear state, the country," whose territory is not among the biggest will be literally raised to the ground in a return strike".

"If a non-nuclear state is implied, then it seems that the laurels of the US that dropped nuclear bombs on defenseless Hiroshima and Nagasaki give the British people no rest," he went on. "But these times have no return, as well as the times of the former mightiness of the British Empire," he said.

"So cut the coat according to the cloth, as we say," he added.