Russian intel chief: US nuclear threats won't intimidate Russia

Sergei Naryshkin, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, has said that US authorities are ready to use their nuclear power as intimidation, but they will not be able to intimidate Russia.

Naryshkin said the US was trying to bring an imbalance to security in the nuclear sphere, Caliber.Az reports, citing Russian media.

“A disturbing circumstance is the pre-critical experiment conducted by the US on 14 May this year in an underground nuclear test laboratory at the Nevada Test Site. The experiment was not a full-scale nuclear test and does not formally constitute a violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the US moratorium on nuclear testing. At the same time, it clearly indicates the readiness of the United States to demonstrate the very ‘nuclear cudgel’ with which in 1945 US President Harry Truman wanted to intimidate the leadership of the Soviet Union,” Naryshkin said at a conference on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the test of the first domestic nuclear charge, the RDN-1.

“It didn't work then, it won't work now,” he added.

Naryshkin noted with regret that the lessons of World War II and the Cold War “are quickly forgotten by those who benefit from it.”