Moscow - Russia today issued a clear warning to the United Kingdom, following the threats by British Defense Minister Michael Fallon to use the nuclear arsenal in a preventive manner if deemed necessary.

London has the right to use its weapons of mass destruction in a preventative way, Fallon said in the face of a debate over nuclear containment in the House of Commons, local press reported.

The United Kingdom must take into account that by its size as a country, by making an attack against a nuclear power, the answer could erase it from the face of the earth, said the deputy chairman of the Committee of Defense and Security of the Russian Senate, Frants Klintsevich.

Rather we should take that statement as an element of a psychological war, said the Russian senator.

A preemptive strike against a state lacking atomic arsenals would be like living again the tragedy of the US launch of atomic bombs against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, he estimated.

The conservative government of Prime Minister Theresa May faces a delicate dilemma in its Defense structure, as the main bases of Trident atomic submarines are in Scotland, which after starting the Brexit process, wishes to leave the United Kingdom.

The capital press says the Scottish leadership wants to repeat a pro-independence referendum, now in the midst of a new situation, when London begins the process to break ties with the European Union, to which most of the Scots are opposed.

Russia, for its part, warns London about the need to avoid atomic blackmail, especially as tensions grow on its eastern border with the concentration of US aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines off the Korean peninsula.