The NATO countries, having turned into participants in the conflict in Ukraine, are now acting in a united alliance not as conditional opponents of Russia, but as enemies, said Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov.

In the interview of Izvestia newspaper, he commented on the decision of Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop Russia's participation in the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty. Peskov noted that when this document was being created, the nuclear arsenals of France and the UK were not taken into account, which are not comparable with the arsenals of Russia and the US in terms of their power and amount. But when NATO became a de facto participant in the conflict in Ukraine, the situation changed.

"As a matter of fact, now NATO acts as a united alliance not as our conventional opponent, but as an enemy. Their intelligence works against us 24 hours a day, their weapons, as Putin emphasized in a recent interview, are supplied to Ukraine for free and shoot our soldiers—not to mention shoot Ukrainian citizens, Ukrainian cities and villages—obligations and collective decisions are made about new supplies, new batches of weapons within the framework of NATO, constantly raising their technical level," said Peskov.