Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that the support of the United States, Britain and France for Ukraine was stoking serious strategic risks that had raised the risk of a direct confrontation between the world’s biggest nuclear powers.

Lavrov said the United States and NATO were obsessed with the idea of inflicting “strategic defeat” on Russia and there were risks in such confrontation that could lead to an increased level of nuclear danger, Reuters reported.

“The Westerners are teetering dangerously on the brink of a direct military clash between nuclear powers, which is fraught with catastrophic consequences,” Lavrov said.

The United States and its allies say they are helping Ukraine to defend itself against Russian aggression and that it is Russia that is aggravating East-West tensions, including by issuing repeated warnings about the danger of a nuclear conflict.

Lavrov said: “Of particular concern is the fact that it is the ‘troika’ of Western nuclear states that are among the key sponsors of the criminal Kyiv regime, the main initiators of various provocative steps. We see serious strategic risks in this, leading to an increase in the level of nuclear danger.”

The three Western countries with nuclear weapons are the United States, Britain and France.

The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to vote Friday on a Palestinian request for full U.N. membership, said diplomats, a move that Israel ally the United States is expected to block because it would effectively recognize a Palestinian state.

The 15-member council is due to vote at 3 pm Friday on a draft resolution that recommends to the 193-member U.N. General Assembly that “the State of Palestine be admitted to membership of the United Nations,” diplomats told Reuters.

A council resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the U.S., Britain, France, Russia or China to pass. Diplomats say the measure could have the support of up to 13 council members, which would force the U.S. to use its veto.

Council member Algeria, which put forward the draft resolution, had requested a vote for Thursday afternoon to coincide with a Security Council meeting on the Middle East, which is due to be attended by several ministers.

The United States has said that establishing an independent Palestinian state should happen through direct negotiations between the parties and not at the United Nations.

“We do not see that doing a resolution in the Security Council will necessarily get us to a place where we can find … a two-state solution moving forward,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on Wednesday.

The Palestinians are currently a non-member observer state, a de facto recognition of statehood that was granted by the 193-member U.N. General Assembly in 2012. But an application to become a full U.N. member needs to be approved by the Security Council and then at least two-thirds of the General Assembly.

The U.N. Security Council has long endorsed a vision of two states living side by side within secure and recognized borders. Palestinians want a state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, all territory captured by Israel in 1967.

Little progress has been made on achieving Palestinian statehood since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the early 1990s.