The US and NATO will receive a decisive response in the form of military-technical countermeasures from Moscow if they create new missile threats to Russia, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
"I do not consider it appropriate to discuss what can and cannot happen in the heads of those who make decisions in the North Atlantic Alliance. For our part, we are ready for any scenarios. In the event of the creation of new missile threats, the adversaries will receive a decisive response in the form of military-technical countermeasures,“ the minister said.
He added that Russia can only be interested in comprehensive measures to reduce the potential for conflict with an emphasis on eliminating the root causes of fundamental contradictions in the security sphere.
"These include, first of all, the long-term expansion of NATO to the east. This largely provoked the Ukrainian crisis and continues to pose a threat to Russia's security. Arms control issues could also be hypothetically discussed, but only as one element of a broader agenda, Lavrov noted.
“The “NATO double solution“, adopted by the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany on December 12, 1979, consisted of deploying American medium-range missiles in Europe, while continuing negotiations with the USSR on the elimination of this type of weapon. "Pershing" were deployed in West Germany between 1983 and 1985, amid unprecedented protests. The largest-scale action took place on October 22, 1983, when, according to some estimates, about 1.2 million people took to the streets of German cities.
The exacerbation of relations between NATO and the socialist bloc in 1983 in connection with the deployment of American medium-range missiles in Europe remains in history as the "Euromissile Crisis".
The "Pershing" missiles were destroyed under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed between the USSR and the USA in 1987.