Russia may need to expand and upgrade its nuclear arsenal, already the world's largest, to counter the threat it faces from the West, a Russian diplomat said in an article published on Thursday.
"In the emerging realities, it is no longer possible to talk about strategic (nuclear) stability in its classical bilateral context," Russian Ambassador-at-Large Grigory Mashkov told International Affairs, a Russian journal.
He said an arms race was underway and that there were now various countries developing missile technology.
"It is possible that in the current conditions of confrontation with the West with its open policy of inflicting strategic damage on Russia, we may face the question of moving away from limiting nuclear and missile arsenals in favor of their quantitative and qualitative increase," he said.