🎙️ 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

🎙 Responses by Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, to questions from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which the newspaper refused to publish in full without cuts or censorship (Moscow, November 13, 2025)

Full text of the interview

Key points:

• Unlike Westerners who have wiped out entire neighbourhoods, we are sparing people – both civilians and military personnel. Our armed forces act with the utmost responsibility, delivering high-precision strikes exclusively at military targets and associated transport and energy infrastructure.

• The goals of the special military operation were determined by President Putin in 2022. It is not about spheres of influence but about returning Ukraine to a neutral, non-aligning and non-nuclear status, and strict observance of the human rights and all the rights of the Russian and other national minorities – this is how these obligations were stipulated by Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence of 1990 and in its Constitution, and it was precisely in view of these declared obligations that Russia recognised the independence of Ukraine.

❗️We are striving and we will achieve in restoring Ukraine to the healthy, sustainable foundations of its statehood, which implies rejecting the submissive offering of its territory for NATO’s military use, purging the Nazi ideology prohibited by the Nuremberg trials, and restoring full rights to Russians, Hungarians and all other national minorities.

• It is indicative that, while dragging the Kiev regime into the EU, the Brussels elites remain silent about the outrageous discrimination of “non-indigenous ethnicities” and praise Zelensky’s junta for defending “European values.” This is just another proof that Nazism is resurging in Europe.

• Most of the European capitals currently make up the core of the so-called “coalition of the willing” whose sole desire is to keep hostilities in Ukraine running for as long as possible. Apparently, they have no other way of distracting their voters from sharply deteriorating domestic socioeconomic problems.

• The confrontation which has arisen from the European elites’ thoughtless and stillborn policy is not Russia’s choice. The present situation does not meet our people’s interests.

• We do not “promote” a multipolar world order as its emergence results from an objective process. Instead of conquest, enslavement, subjugation or exploitation, which was how the colonial powers built their order and went on to bring about capitalism, this process implies cooperation, taking into account each other’s interests, and ensuring the efficient division of labour based on the comparative competitive advantages of the participating countries and integration structures.

• For Russia, there are no unfriendly nations or people, but there are countries with unfriendly governments. And since this is the case for Rome, the relations between Russia and Italy are going through the most serious crisis in post-war history. We were not the ones who got the ball rolling.

• The people of both Russia and Italy stand to benefit from equal and mutually beneficial cooperation between our two countries. If Rome is ready to move towards restoring dialogue based on mutual trust and taking into consideration each other’s interests, it must send us a signal since we are always ready to listen.

• I am proud of my country where I was born and raised, got a decent education, started and continued my diplomatic career. As is well known, Russia is the successor to the USSR, and in general, our country and civilisation dates back a thousand years. The Novgorod Veche emerged long before the West started playing democracy. By the way, I also have a T-shirt with the national coat of arms of the Russian Empire but it does not mean that we want to restore it. One of our greatest assets, of which we are rightly proud, is the continuity of developing and strengthening our state throughout its great history of uniting and consolidating Russian and all other peoples of the country.