Nuclear Blackmail - Again



Russia is threatening its neighbours with nukes again.


Moscow has said it will be forced to strengthen its defences in the Baltic if Finland and Sweden join Nato, including by deploying nuclear weapons, as the war against Ukraine entered its seventh week and the country braced for a major attack in the east.

However, the Lithuanian defence minister, Arvydas Anušauskas, claimed on Thursday that Russia already had nuclear weapons stored in its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Lithuania and Poland. That claim has not been independently verified but the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) reported in 2018 that nuclear weapon storage bunkers in Kaliningrad had been upgraded.

This time the nuclear threat was leveled, not by Putin, but his sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Alexander Grushko, said Moscow would take the security and defence measures that it would deem necessary if Sweden and Finland join Nato, adding that the move would seriously worsen the military situation and lead to “the most undesirable consequences”.

[Lithuanian defence minister] Anušauskas described the Russian threat as “rather strange” because nuclear weapons “have always been kept” in Kaliningrad “They keep nuclear weapons, delivery vehicles, and have warehouses,” he told the Baltic News Service. “The international community and countries in the region are perfectly aware of that.”


Comments

  1. Northern PoVApril 15, 2022 at 6:23 AM

    Although Russia has the edge right now in hypersonic missiles that fly 10 x speed/sound and cannot be tracked or intercepted. One of these took out a NATO arms depot near Lviv. The USA will soon catch up with similar weapons.

    Joining NATO will mean more missiles right on Russia's borders, a country that has just demonstrated the weakness of its conventional forces.

    A recipe for peace?

    ReplyDelete

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