West Should Focus on Real Threat of US Nuclear Weapons in Europe - Russian Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW, (Sputnik) - The West should think about the real threat of the deployment of US nuclear weapons in Europe instead of talking about a hypothetical deployment of Russian weapons in Belarus, Director of the Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control of the Russian Foreign Ministry Vladimir Yermakov said.

A senior US State Department official said last month that proposed changes to the Belarusian Constitution indicate Minsk's plans to allow both Russian conventional and nuclear forces to be stationed on its territory.

"I would like to counter ask the question of whether our European colleagues see a threat to their security not in the hypothetical Belarusian, but in the actual deployment on the territory of a number of NATO countries of American nuclear weapons capable of hitting targets on the territory of Russia", Yermakov said.

He emphasised that the participation of European non-nuclear states in NATO's "joint nuclear missions" directly contradicts their basic obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

"We categorically disagree with such duplicity of Western countries", Yermakov told Sputnik.