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Russia ready for dialogue on withdrawing nuclear arsenal
Published: 02 February, 2010, 14:56
Edited: 10 March, 2010, 12:32
TAGS: Arms, Conflict, Military, Nuclear, Russia, Protest, Politics, Europe, USA
Responding to calls to withdraw tactical nuclear weapons from Russia’s EU border, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov said that Russia is open for dialogue on the issue, but it should be direct and not through the mass media.
Earlier, the foreign ministers of Poland and Sweden, Radoslav Sikorsky and Carl Bildt respectively, published an article in the New York Times where they urged Moscow to remove its nuclear weapons from the Kaliningrad Region and the Kola Peninsula. In their initiative, they have also requested that the US removes its nuclear warheads from European territory.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that Moscow has been calling on other countries to make a move in this direction and to remove all tactical weapons to the countries that own them. “We have not been able to persuade our partners to at least start discussing this issue,” Lavrov told a news conference after a meeting with his Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Store.
Lavrov, however, has stressed that Russia will only discuss this issue directly: “If they decided to voice this idea not during direct contacts with us, but through newspaper articles, they probably pursued some goal that does not quite match the efforts to sort out this issue.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the head of the State Duma Committee for International Relations Konstantin Kosachev said that Moscow’s initiative to create an international agreement on European security has been ignored by both Poland and Sweden.
He also added that the Swedish-Polish initiative will only be given the green light when security in Europe will be collective, integrated and indivisible: “Until all the forces of ensuring European Security will be united, only nuclear weapons will be able to sustain the global strategic security balance of the continent. And in this regard, the decision on the quantity and the geographical location of nuclear arms will remain between the two nuclear powers: Russia and the US – whether the third parties like that or not.”
Many analysts think, however, that the timing of the Polish-Swedish initiative is not accidental, as it coincides with the new round of US-Russia talks in Geneva concerning a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
However, Vladimir Yevseyev from the Center of International Security in Moscow thinks that neither Sweden nor Poland expected an immediate action on their initiative:
“Tactical nuclear arms withdrawal from European territories is not the most topical issue at the moment. As for Sweden, even though it’s not a NATO member, it’s really difficult to imagine that it will ever be attacked by either Russia or the US. Sweden came up with this initiative as it is more worried about the environmental damage that such arms may cause. As for Poland, it just used this moment to distract attention from the expansion of its own arms.”
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Viktor Litovkin, Editor-in-Chief of the “Independent Military Review” thinks, Poland used this initiative as another opportunity to cast another stone towards Russia: “This is very typical of Poland. You know this Russophobia is their historical illness, and there is really no cure for that.”
However, the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine “Russia in Global Politics” Fyodor Lukyanov thinks that such initiative has been coordinated with the US. In an interview to Russian radio station Echo Moskvy, he said that the current US-Russia talks are only about strategic nuclear weapons, which are not stored in Europe by Russia. The US however has long wanted to include tactical warheads in the dialogue and this was an indirect way of pointing at this issue. He says that – since Barack Obama is organizing a so-called nuclear summit in April this year, and then in May there will be a conference on nuclear non proliferation – Obama wants (and needs) to come up with some important initiatives in this sphere.
Olga Masalkova, RT
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14 comments
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To mcc: the biggest advantage of Russia revealed being that Western powers always underrated her potential, see France and Germany. Russian army without communication won a war against Georgian well trained and equipped army in two days. How long would have taken NATO to occupy Georgia? Russia's army, air-force and navy are aging, nonetheless the research in the defense field kept on going on and in case of war the industrial machine would be put in full production as Russia seems to have a missile defense network able to guarantee the protection of industries in case of an attack with strategic weapons. The nuclear arsenal is not rusty at all, the 90% of it was build less than 2 decades ago. Russia launched in the fall of 2008 a program and she is modernizing the communication systems within their forces amid the Georgian war and they just added other satellites for the Glonass for that purpose. I cannot see a real problem with Russian defense except with the navy which at the end has only a defense purpose and does not need to replace aging cruisers or to commission carriers. Russian navy would need only many fast corvettes and frigates carrying tactical weapons, attack submarines and ballistic m. submarines. They have +- 150 interceptors which are more than enough in case of an attack made by strategic bombers. In case of war Russia would be protected from an invasion as she has in service around 3,400 non-strategic nuclear weapons. The chances of NATO forces to survive more than 5 weeks on Russian soil are basically around zero in my opinion. The defense of such a vast territory can be made only with missiles and providing the army with a good logistic. Russia is not spending huge shares of GDP on defense simply because she does not need it. Russia do not need an imperialistic policy to survive as she has all the natural resources she needs. The Algeria case is my opinion was pure political.
Do you think that Russia will give up their only triumph card - the nuclear weapons - old and rusty they may be, but still a deterrent. Without it Russia will be totally defenseless. Russia has NO ARMY, NO AIR FORCE NO NAVY to match NATO - to compare this with American military would be simply impossible. Their arm forces are the greatest joke in the civilized West. Remember Kursk, bulava, those thirty-eight military planes - total Russian junk that have been returned to Russia by Algeria - another great technological superpower, Russian troops, hungry, sick and dirty, stealing toilet sets from Georgian population during the Russian invasion of Georgia, shall I go on??
The case of the Algerians returning some Migs is an unusual case against Russia, unless of course instead of those Migs they took Typhoons or Rafales or even F-35s. What they actually took instead of those old useless Rusty Russian planes were... more useless old rusty Russian planes. They bought more Sukhois to replace the Migs. BTW I didn't see the US or NATO rushing to save Georgia in 2008 from nasty Russian aggression, so I really don't see them rushing to save anyone from Russia. Right now the US and the West needs Russia, especially in Afghanistan. In fact how long ago was it that NATO went cap in hand asking for free Russian weapons to arm Afghan forces loyal to NATO? How many more casualties will NATO take if all their material has to go through Pakistan instead of through Russia? The simple reality is that the West simply can't afford another conflict and as long as the US keeps nuclear weapons in Germany Russia will not consider withdrawing its own tactical nuclear weapons from where they are currently stored. That is what the dialog will be about and the US will no budge so the US will be the bad guy again, to the frustration of old europe. New europe will not want the US weapons withdrawn anyway. And I doubt Russia cares one way or another whether the weapons are there or not... tactical weapons basically will be a rounding of the result of the strategic war. (ie tactical weapons will round the damage up to even numbers so its effect overall will be negligible.