“The destructive course of the NATO countries to ignore our red lines and be drawn into a confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, balancing on the brink of a direct armed conflict, is extremely risky,” he said in an interview with Izvestia.

Ryabkov added that such a policy could lead to an escalation "up to a military clash of nuclear powers."

The diplomat noted that Russia could hypothetically use nuclear weapons only as a response to aggression using weapons of mass destruction against Moscow or its allies.

Earlier, Ivan Nechaev, deputy director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that Moscow was not interested in a direct clash with the United States and NATO and, being a nuclear power, would continue to act as responsibly as possible.

Prior to this, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted that the inadmissibility of nuclear war is Russia's principled position.