Andrey Belousov: NATO nuclear expansion leaves Russia no choice but to respond

The Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador-at-Large says any wider US nuclear mission in Europe would force a military-technical response RT: It is well known that the United States has stationed nuclear weapons in NATO countries in Europe since the 1950s as part of a nuclear‑exchange programme.

Why has the issue of removing US nuclear weapons from the region become a matter of fundamental importance at this moment? Andrey Belousov: First and foremost, it must be noted that the problem of US nuclear weapons on the territory of European states and Turkiye has long been the subject of bilateral meetings on strategic stability, including at the beginning of the mid‑1990s.

For the record, under presidential initiatives in the early 1990s, Russia reduced its non‑strategic nuclear arsenal four‑fold and kept the remainder at central storage bases.

We could reasonably expect symmetrical moves from the United States.

Yet the actions taken by the US in the early 2000s – such as the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Greece and the United Kingdom, and partially from Italy and Germany – seemed more like a tactical concession or a trick, without changing the military‑political context in Europe.

After all, the US nuclear weapons withdrawal from Greece was fully compensated by their presence in Turkiye, and those withdrawn from the UK were replaced by its own nuclear arsenal of the United Kingdom – which is the main and most important ally, strategic ally of the United States.

In contrast, the measures taken to remove and reduce US nuclear weapons in Italy and Germany did not significantly enhance security, trust, or predictability, because the practice of US nuclear weapons in Europe and joint NATO nuclear missions continued unchanged.

In short, if we keep talking about this, we must remember that at that time the United States consistently followed a line to enhance its strategic capabilities, primarily through the implementation of plans and programmes not directly related to strengthening its nuclear potential, most of which was under the arms‑control bans at the time – Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

By the mid‑1990s, the US began implementing its Global Missile Defence configuration, which envisaged deploying one of its segments – the third positional sector – in Europe.

At the same time, the concept of a global lightning‑strike was being implemented, under which the US could use non‑nuclear strategic carriers to strike any target anywhere on Earth.

We should also mention the development of new nuclear delivery systems and, finally, a programme to create laser anti‑satellite air‑based systems.