MOSCOW — Russia’s deputy foreign minister said this week that the risk of nuclear war between his country and the United States was at its highest in decades.
American support for Ukraine has put Russia “in a de facto state of open conflict with the United States,” the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, said during a conference in Moscow about Russia’s decision to suspend its participation in the New START arms reduction treaty.
Currently, there is “an absolutely unprecedented level of hostility toward the U.S.” in Russia, he said.
“I wouldn’t want to dive into a discussion about whether the likelihood of a nuclear conflict is high today, but it is higher than anything we have had for the past few decades, let’s put it that way,” Mr. Ryabkov said.
Mr. Ryabkov said that the recent summit between President Vladimir V. Putin and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, underscored the existence of a new world order in which the United States was not the leading power.
Some analysts have said the display of “brotherly” relations between Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin during a three-day state visit that concluded Wednesday belies the real nature of the relationship: China is a more powerful partner in the alliance with an increasingly isolated and reliant Russia.
Mr. Ryabkov did not see it like that.
In the interview, he said that the summit was clear proof that Russia was rejecting the global dominance of the United States in favor of a world led by China, in the hope of building the “multipolar” global order the Kremlin seeks.
The message of the summit between the leaders was that “there is an alternative to American dictates,” Mr. Ryabkov said.
“We would be happy to be in a family of civilized nations,” he said. “But we are now in a situation where, in fact, the old world order is being broken. And what we used to know, what was familiar, is being replaced by another world that is more unstable, probably more conflict-prone, but I hope a fairer one, where big brother will not dominate.”
Mr. Xi was more concise when he bade farewell to Mr. Putin on Tuesday night, after a carefully choreographed set of meetings and a state banquet.
“Right now there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Putin through an interpreter, according to a video taken by a journalist from the Kremlin media pool.
“And we are the ones driving these changes together,” Mr. Xi said, before the two men shook hands.
