“Allegations that Russian nuclear forces are on high alert are untrue,” the diplomat asserted in statements to the press.

In this regard, he explained that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered that “the deterrent force is temporarily placed on special duty, only for increased surveillance, not a state of high combat readiness.”

The Russian representative stressed that the accusations against his country for allegedly increasing its nuclear capabilities are unproven and unsubstantiated, and are based on “unreliable estimates or totally erroneous information,” he stressed.

Belousov added that Russian doctrine strictly limits emergency situations for the use of nuclear weapons hypothetically possible only in response to an aggression with weapons of mass destruction or an aggression with conventional weapons in which the very existence of the state is threatened.

In this regard, he argued that “none of these hypothetical scenarios is relevant to the situation in Ukraine”.

The diplomat also stated that the warnings about a “grave risk of nuclear war” expressed by Russian officials in the context of the crisis in Ukraine are due to the destabilizing and dangerous behavior of Western countries, which “are balancing dangerously to the brink of a direct armed confrontation with Russia,” he said.

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