Two U.S. B-1B heavy bombers joined large-scale combat drills over South Korea on Thursday amid warnings from North Korea that the exercises and U.S. threats have made the outbreak of war “an established fact.”

The annual U.S.-South Korean “Vigilant Ace” exercises feature 230 aircraft, including some of the most advanced U.S. stealth warplanes, and come a week after North Korea tested its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to date, which it says can reach all of the United States.

North Korea’s foreign ministry blamed the drills and “confrontational warmongering” by U.S. officials for making war inevitable.

“The remaining question now is: when will the war break out?” it said in a statement. “We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it.”

China, North Korea’s neighbor and lone major ally, again urged calm and said war was not the answer, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said North Korea wanted direct talks with the United States to seek guarantees on its security, something Moscow was ready to facilitate.

“We hope all relevant parties can maintain calm and restraint and take steps to alleviate tensions and not provoke each other,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said.

“The outbreak of war is not in any side’s interest. The ones that will suffer the most are ordinary people.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the sidelines of a conference in Vienna that U.S. military exercises and aggressive rhetoric were causing an unacceptable escalation in tension.

Lavrov said he had passed on to Tillerson Pyongyang’s desire for direct talks.

“We know that North Korea wants above all to talk to the United States about guarantees for its security. We are ready to support that, we are ready to take part in facilitating such negotiations,” Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said direct talks with North Korea were “not on the table until they are willing to denuclearize.”

“It is something that Russia says it agrees with; it is something China has said it agrees with, and many other nations around the world as well,” she told a regular briefing.

Nauert said North Korea was “not showing any interest in sitting down and having any kind of serious conversations when they continue to fire off ballistic missiles.”

Another State Department spokesperson, Justin Higgins, said it was not enough for North Korea to freeze its nuclear program, and it “must be prepared to come to the table ready to chart a course to ‘cease and roll back’” that program.

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