The Russian Foreign Ministry called the state of relations between nuclear states depressing.

Relations between the nuclear States are currently in a depressing state. This was announced on May 5 by Andrei Belousov, Ambassador-at-Large of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and head of the Russian delegation to the Review Conference on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

"Currently, relations between nuclear states [are] in a depressing state," RIA Novosti quoted him as saying at the NPT Review Conference.

Belousov added that concerns about the aggravation of strategic risks and an increase in the level of nuclear danger are "well-founded."

Nuclear gambit: NPT participants gather at a conference in New York

The meeting may end without a final document for the third time in a row.

Two days earlier, Russian Ambassador to France Alexei Meshkov linked the talk in Europe about expanding nuclear capabilities with the possible collapse of the NPT. Such plans, he added, encourage other countries to develop weapons of this type.

Sergei Nechaev, the ambassador who heads the Russian diplomatic mission in Germany, said that the strengthening of Europe's so-called "nuclear umbrella" poses a strategic threat to Russia.