Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday he did not believe the conflict in Ukraine would spiral into a nuclear war but cautioned the United States and Europe that Moscow never again wanted to be dependent on the West.

Asked by a Kremlin correspondent for Russia’s Kommersant newspaper if he thought a nuclear war could be triggered, Lavrov told reporters in Turkey, “I don’t want to believe, and I do not believe, that a nuclear war could start.”