Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said today that any nuclear weapons developed in Poland would be legitimate targets in the event of an armed conflict with the NATO military alliance.

Earlier, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia would make NATO nuclear weapons in Poland one of its primary targets if they were deployed there. “…Moves in this direction will not provide greater security (to Poland or other countries hosting such weapons),” Ryabkov said today, according to the TASS news agency.

On Monday, April 22, Polish President Andrzej Duda said that Warsaw is ready to host nuclear weapons on its soil if NATO, of which it is a member, decides to strengthen its eastern flank to counter the development of new weapons by Russia in Kaliningrad and Belarus.

For the conference in Switzerland

Referring to the June 15-16 high-level conference on achieving peace in Ukraine in Switzerland, Zakharova said today that any talks to end the conflict in Ukraine are meaningless without Russian participation.

The representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also told the journalists that the peace formula of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which calls for the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from all the territories they occupied, does not bring peace closer but prolongs the conflict.

Zakharova also stated during today’s press briefing that the US is trying to create divisions between Russia and China. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is visiting China today.
“As for the United States’ attempts to drive a wedge in relations between Russia and China, the United States is speaking out about it,” he said.
She added that Russia’s relationship with China – with which it signed a “borderless” cooperation agreement less than three weeks before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine – is not directed against any other country.