- Russia has threatened to deploy nuclear weapons in the Baltic states if Finland and Sweden join NATO.
- Lithuania has scoffed at the threat, as it is already estimated that Russia has nuclear assets in the region.
- Experts say this is an “empty threat” from Russia.
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Russia on Thursday threatened to deploy nuclear weapons in the Baltic states if Finland and Sweden join NATO, despite the fact that such assets are already estimated to exist in the region.
“If Sweden and Finland join NATO, the length of the alliance’s land borders with the Russian Federation will more than double. Of course, these borders will have to be strengthened, “Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, told the Telegram. .
“We can no longer talk about the status of the Baltic Sea without nuclear energy – the balance must be restored,” said Medvedev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvidas Anusauskas responded by saying that the Russian threat was “quite strange”, given that Russia currently has nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, according to Reuters. Kaliningrad is located between Lithuania and Poland, both members of NATO.
“The current Russian threats seem rather strange when we know that even without the current security situation, they are keeping the weapon 100 km from the Lithuanian border.”
“Nuclear weapons have always been stored in Kaliningrad … the international community, the countries of the region are fully aware of this … They use it as a threat,” he added.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) published satellite images in 2018, which it said showed “a major overhaul of what appears to be an active nuclear weapons storage site in the Kaliningrad region, about 50 kilometers from the Polish border.”
Carl Bildt, Sweden’s former prime minister, tweeted that Medvedev’s warning was a “pretty empty threat” given the apparent presence of Russian nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad.
Hans Christensen, director of the FAS nuclear information project, also downplayed Medvedev’s nuclear threat and challenged the Russian politician’s assumption that the “balance” would have to be restored if Finland and Sweden joined NATO.
“What balance? “Even if Finland / Sweden joins, there will be no nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe,” Christensen tweeted on Thursday. “This is a good reminder that Russia is using nuclear weapons to compensate for what it sees as lower conventional capabilities. Ukraine’s failure and NATO enlargement are likely to exacerbate that.”
Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed Finland and Sweden closer than ever to join NATO. The leaders of the two countries on Wednesday signaled that a decision on whether to aspire to NATO membership could be made in the near future.
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