Russia’s nuclear arsenal is among the most powerful in the world and serves as the country’s “main safeguard,” Mikhail Kovalchuk, President of the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center, said.

“We are alive today only because we possess one of the world’s best and most powerful nuclear arsenals. It is our primary ‘safeguard,’” he said in an interview with Dmitry Simes, editor-in-chief of Politika magazine. Kovalchuk noted that the “nuclear umbrella” is fraying. Whereas there were previously only two nuclear powers - the Soviet Union and the United States - around a dozen countries now possess nuclear weapons.

“Everyone else realizes that they, too, need nuclear weapons to preserve their sovereignty. Despite the IAEA and the non-proliferation regime, nuclear weapons have become — I would say — accessible to the masses. Furthermore, their role as a deterrent will diminish, partly because current generations were born after World War II. For them, the horrors of war are merely images on a TV screen or scenes from a computer game,” he added.