Russia warns of nuclear weapons in the Baltic Sea if Sweden and Finland join NATO | Russia
Moscow has said it will be forced to strengthen its defense in the Baltic Sea if Finland and Sweden join NATO, including by deploying nuclear weapons, as the war in Ukraine entered its seventh week and the country prepared for a major attack in the east.
However, Lithuanian Defense 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 weapons storage bunkers in Kaliningrad had been upgraded.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a senior member of Russia’s Security Council, said on Thursday that all its forces in the region would be strengthened if the two Nordic countries join the US-led alliance.
Medvedev’s threat is the latest in many cases of a nuclear saber race from the Kremlin aimed at deterring Western military intervention on behalf of Ukraine.
“We’re obviously very worried,” said CIA Director William Burns. “Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the adversity they have faced so far militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential approach to tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons.”
But Burns added: “Although we have seen some rhetorical stances on the part of the Kremlin, moving to higher levels of nuclear preparedness, so far we have not seen much practical evidence of the type of deployments or military dispositions that we would reinforce that concern.”
Finland and Sweden are considering abandoning decades of military freedom of alliance and joining NATO, where the leaders of the two Nordic countries say that Russia’s attack on Ukraine has changed Europe’s “entire security landscape”.
Their accession to the alliance would more than double Russia’s land border with NATO members, Medvedev said. “Of course we need to strengthen these borders” by strengthening the ground, air and naval defenses in the region, he said.
Medvedev, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, explicitly addressed the nuclear threat and said that Finnish and Swedish NATO membership would mean that there could no longer be any nuclear-weapon-free status for the Baltic Sea – the balance must be restored.
Russia had “not taken such measures and will not do so,” he said. “But if our hand is forced, yes … note that it was not us who suggested this.”
Russia borders the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia, and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said Moscow would take the security and defense measures it deems necessary if Sweden and Finland join NATO, adding that the measure would seriously aggravate the military situation and lead to “the most undesirable consequences”. .
Anušauskas described the Russian threat as “rather strange” because, he said, nuclear weapons “have always been stored” in Kaliningrad. “They have nuclear weapons, delivery vehicles and stockpiles,” he told the Baltic News Service. “The international community and the countries of the region are fully aware of that.”
2018 FAS analyzed satellite images and concluded that the Russians had carried out a major renovation of what appeared to be “an active nuclear storage site in the Kaliningrad region”. However, analysts could not determine if nuclear warheads were already stored there, were close to arriving or would be moved there in a crisis.
“There really is a storage site in Kaliningrad, known as Kolosovka. This is where nuclear weapons for all units in Kaliningrad would be located,” said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based military expert who runs a research project on Russian nuclear forces. “There are conflicting reports as to whether Russia actually has any weapons in Kolosovka. We do not really know.”
Hans Kristensen, head of the nuclear information project at FAS, said that work is still ongoing at the storage bunkers. “They are working on the security area now. So I doubt that there are warheads in there,” Kristensen said.
The Prime Minister of Finland, Sanna Marin, said on Wednesday that Finland, which shares an 810 km (1,300 km) border with Russia, is likely to decide on a NATO application “within a few weeks”, while her Swedish counterpart, Magdalena Andersson, said where. There was “no point in delaying” the decision.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian forces that had withdrawn from northern Ukraine after failing to take the capital “increase their activities on the southern and eastern fronts and seek revenge for their defeats”.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said on Thursday that Russia was gathering forces along the Russian-Ukrainian border, in Belarus and in the Transnistrian breakaway region of Moldova, where the eastern cities of Kharkiv, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia were being attacked.
Moldova accused the Russian army of trying to recruit its citizens after British military intelligence said Moscow was trying to recruit soldiers in Transnistria, a narrow strip of land held by pro-Russian separatists located about 25 miles from the Ukrainian port of Odesa.
“Such actions do not promote peace for all of us, our citizens, for our families. Such things are very dangerous and must be stopped,” said Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu without giving further details. The Kremlin did not immediately comment.
The main military development of the day was the loss of Russia’s flagship missile cruiser, Moscow, which sank in the “stormy sea” while being towed to a port in the Black Sea after an explosion.
The Ukrainian southern military command claimed late Wednesday that they had struck Moscow with Neptune’s cruise missiles, while distracting its crew with an aircraft drone, causing it to start sinking and forcing the crew to abandon the ship.
Russia’s defense minister initially denied reports that it had sunk, claiming the fires had been put out. Four Russian ships that had gone to Moscow’s rescue were hampered by stormy weather and by ammunition blown up on board.
But late on Thursday, the ministry said in a statement: “The cruise ship Moscow lost its stability when it was towed to port due to damage to the ship’s hull which it received during the fire from the detonation of ammunition. Under stormy sea conditions, the ship sank.” The crew had certainly been evacuated, but it is the largest military loss of a naval ship since the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was torpedoed by a British submarine in 1982.
Moscow said the port of Mariupol was under its full control, but Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on Thursday that the dispute over the port “is still going on today”.
Mariupol is a key target in Moscow’s efforts to secure a land corridor between the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in Donbas and Crimea, which Russia occupied and annexed in 2014, and its capture would enable the Kremlin’s military planners to relocate important resources further east.
Russian officials accused Ukraine of using helicopters to bomb a town in the southern Bryansk region, about 6 miles from the border, saying seven people were injured in shelling and described the attack as a “deliberate attack on residential buildings”. The claim could not be verified independently.
The Russian retreat from around Kyiv has led to the discovery of a large number of apparently massacred civilians, which has aroused international condemnation and calls for an investigation into war crimes. The Hague-based International Criminal Court, which deals with violations of rights, said Ukraine had become a “crime scene”.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, said during a visit to Bucha, where officials say more than 400 civilians died: “We are here because we have reasonable grounds to believe that crimes are being committed within the court’s jurisdiction.” Moscow has rejected all reports of atrocities, which Putin has dismissed as “forgeries”.