It would appear that British defense minister Michael Fallon's comments that The UK could launch a preemptive nuclear strike "in the most extreme circumstances," was not an implicit threat that the deputy head of the Russian Federation Council’s Committee for Defense and Security took lightly.
In a terse Facebook posted response, Frants Klintsevich raged:
"I think that the statement by the minister of defence of Britain's Michael Fallon deserves a harsh response, and I'm not afraid to push him over the edge.
At best this statement should be seen as a certain element of psychological warfare, which looks especially revolting in this context.
There is a quite natural question then: what country could be primitively targeted by the UK?
If against nuclear power, the United Kingdom, which doesn't have the greatest of territories, will literally be erased from the face of the earth with a retaliatory strike.
But if it is targeting a non-nuclear power, this will remind of the US nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But that time has long passed, as has the time of the former greatness of the British empire."
As RT reports, Klintsevich's comment comes after Fallon on Monday said that the UK is prepared to carry out a preemptive nuclear strike against any enemies, even if Britain is not under attack.
“In the most extreme circumstances we have made it very clear that you can’t rule out the use of nuclear weapons as a first strike,” Fallon said on the BBC’s Today program, however not specifying what “most extreme circumstances” imply.
“The whole point about the deterrent is that you have got to leave uncertainty in the mind of anyone who might be thinking of using weapons against this country,” he said.
With North Korea and now US test-launching their nukes, and Thaad being deployed uncomfortably close to China and Russian borders, it is no surprise that a recent report by the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) showed that the threat of a “nuclear weapon detonation event,” accidental or deliberate, is “arguably at its highest in the 26 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union,” as relations between nuclear powers continue to deteriorate.