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The Russian ambassador to Britain accused the government of that country of violating its commitments under an international treaty through a plan to increase the country’s nuclear arsenal, and said that political relations between Moscow and London “are almost finished.”
Britain said in a foreign policy and defense policy review published Tuesday and backed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson that it needs to increase its nuclear arsenal to counter evolving global security threats.
Britain added in the review that it would increase its maximum arsenal of nuclear warheads from 180 to 260, and the same report classified Russia as “the most dangerous threat to our security” in the European and Atlantic region.
The Kremlin said at the time that it regretted the British nuclear decision, describing it as damaging to international stability, while the Russian Foreign Ministry described the move as a major blow to limit the global spread of weapons.
Russian ambassador to Britain Andrei Killin went further in an interview scheduled to be broadcast on LBC radio on Sunday, saying the plan seemed illegal.
“The number of warheads is increasing by 40 percent,” according to excerpts from the interview on the station’s website.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons came into force in 1970 and Britain was one of the countries that ratified it, and the British government said its plans did not violate the treaty.
Russian news agencies quoted Killin as saying that political relations between London and Moscow “almost ended”.
Tensions rose in relations between the two countries due to a series of incidents, including the imprisonment in Russia of political opponent Alexei Navalny and the poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter in 2018.
The agencies added that Killin said that what was left between the two countries were only cultural and economic ties.
He was quoted by LBC radio as saying that the last time he spoke to British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was in December 2019.
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