🎙️ Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with Russian media outlets (Moscow, November 11, 2025)

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❓ Question: Moscow and Washington have almost simultaneously announced nuclear test plans. Does this signify global instability or rather demonstrate equal capabilities and thus the preservation of parity?

💬 Sergey Lavrov: I have heard nothing about Moscow announcing nuclear tests, so it is inaccurate to say that Washington and Moscow made such statements simultaneously.

As I mentioned in a recent interview with Russian media outlets, we have so far not received clarifications from our US counterparts as to what exactly President Donald Trump meant to convey in his remarks. Was it nuclear tests, delivery vehicle tests, or subcritical tests which do not involve a nuclear reaction and are permitted under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT)?

There has been no answer to that so far.

The CTBT Preparatory Commission met yesterday, but a US representative failed to provide any clarifications, either, although such a forum is clearly the right place to clarify what the US President had in mind when he said that. <…>

What may the geopolitical goal of the United States look like? 👉 Domination, right? The use of nuclear weapons argument in this setting is alarming and represents a significant departure from the concept once agreed upon by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev where a nuclear war cannot be won and therefore must never be fought.

Robert Kadlec seeking the position of Assistant Secretary of Defence also stated that nuclear options should be developed to respond to certain regional conflicts that may flare up. That, too, is a rather curious statement. It’s a direct tell that this gentleman, once in office, will be thinking in terms of using nuclear threats in order to achieve the outcomes that the United States may need in a particular region.

He then went on to demonstrate even more instances of double standards when he said that NATO’s nuclear deterrence strategy might be revised in the wake of Russia deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Yet, the fact that this was done after many decades of joint nuclear missions with US tactical nuclear weapons long stationed in five NATO member states and the fact that we have long proposed to redeploy all nuclear weapons back to the countries that own them was simply ignored.

Since Belarus has received nuclear weapons from Russia, the US side now wants to deploy theirs somewhere else as well. We are aware of ongoing contacts with South Korea and Japan. These games are very dangerous.

Back to your question, we have not announced nuclear test plans. At a meeting of the Security Council’s permanent members, President Vladimir Putin highlighted US President Donald Trump’s statement that Russia and China have long been doing this, and therefore the United States must do so, too. We immediately contacted our counterparts and let them know that there must have been a misunderstanding. We are looking forward to receiving clarifications.

President Putin has issued a directive not to conduct nuclear tests and not even to make preparations for them. The Foreign Ministry, along with other agencies, including military and intelligence, has been instructed to analyse the situation and to reach a consensus on whether this situation warrants considering the resumption of nuclear tests.

Our principled position was laid out by President Putin in 2023, when, taking a question during one of his speeches, he said that if a nuclear power were to conduct nuclear weapons test (not delivery system tests, not subcritical tests), then Russia will respond in kind. <…>

#RussiaUS #CTBT