MOSCOW, November 24. /TASS/. Nuclear weapons are a last resort and should never be used, the president of the national research center Kurchatov Institute, Mikhail Kovalchuk, said on Thursday.
"They [nuclear weapons] will not be used by anyone. Only if [someone decides] to destroy humanity," he said at the Russian Winemaking Forum in Moscow.
This type of weapon is a deterrent, Kovalchuk recalled.
He noted that, "it will never occur to anyone [except for the United States] to use it."
"It is the bottom line weapon. It is a weapon that frightens, but should never be used," Kovalchuk stressed.
Biological threats
While commenting on the global threats facing humanity, he noted that the risk of human race being destroyed "by biological means" was much greater.
"Imagine, this COVID will suddenly show a five-fold, ten-fold increase in mortality. Who will survive in these conditions? Only the country that has the knowhow to create a vaccine. We were the first to do that. We created several vaccines. Several other countries did that, too. The other countries will be doomed to extinction, if nobody supplies a vaccine to them," Kovalchuk said.
He added that the national security and technological independence of states primarily depended on agriculture, medicines and the biosecurity of the population as a whole.