Russia demanded on Wednesday that the US withdraw all their nuclear weapons from Europe and dismantle the infrastructure for their development.

US nuclear weapons provoke “the most serious security problem on the continent,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova at a press conference in Moscow.

“Our requests in this matter remain unchanged, they include the withdrawal of all American nuclear weapons from Europe, as well as the dismantling of the existing infrastructure for their development,” Zakharova stressed.

Zakharova also expressed concern over Japan’s plans to participate in US military exercisesincluding pilot training in nuclear warfare exercises.

He accused Washington of using Japan and South Korea against Russia and China, adding that “the development of geopolitical armed conflict scenarios with the use of nuclear weapons is causing further tensions, undermining peace and stability and pushing the region on the brink of nuclear destruction”.

Calling US policy on the Korean Peninsula “aggressive”, he argued that Washington is trying to “bring another region into a state of total chaos, to turn it into Middle East No. 2″.

“That would be great for them, because that means new contracts for the US military-industrial complex, another opportunity to show their citizens some kind of ‘exclusivity’, the ability to operate in this chaos, to raise the stakes in international affairs,” he said.

According to Anadolou, Zakharova also warned that any potential threats to Russia’s eastern border “will be dealt with with adequate measures by Moscow to strengthen its defense capability.’

In addition, Zakharova criticized France’s decision to sell of Caesar self-propelled artillery systems in Armeniawhich was signed on Monday by the defense ministers of the two sides in Paris.

“Paris provokes another round of armed confrontation in the South Caucasus. This is another step,” said the Russian official.

Zakharova accused France of seeking to use existing differences in the region as “a tool to achieve of its own opportunistic goals’noting that he was speaking not only of Paris’s interests as a state, but also of its goals as a “conduit of NATO ideology.”

On Tuesday, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry criticized the Paris move, saying it was “further proof of France’s provocative activities in the South Caucasus region.”