"I will only say that responsible defense planning should take into account all options and be aimed at demonstrating the futility of talking to us in the language of force," Grushko said when asked whether Russia was modeling hypothetical scenarios of war with NATO in light of the alliance's recent actions and whether there was still a possibility of avoiding it.
NATO is practicing variants of military actions against Russia, but Russian military planning takes into account any variants of events development, the minister added.
Russia also takes into account that, in the military-technical sense, NATO is on the way to increasing the role of nuclear weapons in the alliance's strategy, Grushko said.
"The fact remains that both in conceptual, political, and military-technical senses NATO's nuclear-armed countries and the bloc itself, which has declared itself nuclear, are on the way to increasing the role of nuclear weapons in the alliance's strategy," he said.
Russia is updating its nuclear doctrine so that its adversaries have no illusions about Moscow's readiness to ensure security by all means, the minister added.
Grushko also pointed out that the security situation would look different without NATO's expansion.
"The security situation would look different if it were not for the North Atlantic alliance's desire to pull as many states as possible into its ranks at any cost," Grushko said.
The mythical threat from the East is used by the United States to insert Europe into the world order and maintain American hegemony in the world, the minister said, adding that talks about Kiev's irreversible movement toward NATO membership are necessary to preserve Ukraine as a spearhead in the hybrid war against Russia.
Moscow believes that people in the West are already regretting that NATO rejected the Russian draft treaty on security guarantees, which was transferred to Brussels in December 2021.