Russia moves nuclear weapons, U.S. says

WASHINGTON -- Russia has secretly shifted key tactical short-range nuclear weapons to its Baltic Sea base, U.S. officials believe.

The arms were moved to the Kaliningrad military base during 2000, the officials said on Wednesday, linking the move to Moscow's greater need for nuclear deterrence because of a decline in its conventional forces.

Russia has told the United States it would centrally store all of its tactical nuclear weapons, but the U.S. official said the Russians have never provided any details.

Russia's defence ministry, quoted by Interfax news agency, dismissed as "absolutely untrue" news reports that nuclear weapons had been shifted to Kaliningrad, a major Baltic Sea military base located in a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.

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U.S. officials, however, said Russia had transferred the arms particularly during the last six months.

They could not say how many of the battlefield nuclear weapons were now at the base or whether they had been "married-up" with short-range missiles or other "delivery systems" already located there.

"Tactical nukes can be a cheaper way of maintaining your deterrence capabilities as opposed to the more expensive, larger conventional forces," one U.S. official said.

"If you are worried about deterrence and your forces are deteriorating, nukes do wonders for your self-confidence," the official added.

One senior U.S. defence official said storage of nuclear weapons at Kaliningrad appeared to violate the spirit of a non-binding agreement between the United States and Russia that prohibited the deployment of nuclear weapons in the Baltics.

He agreed, however, that Russia might argue that the Russian territory at Kaliningrad was not technically Baltic territory.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official said this move combined with Russia's recent arms agreement with Iran and other measures by Russia since President Vladimir Putin took office had caused concern in the U.S. defence community.

Intelligence experts continue to follow Russian weapons movements, but at this stage, the official said there is no serious concern about the movements into Kaliningrad.

Russia has had storage facilities for nuclear weapons at Kaliningrad for some time and has probably kept the weapons there for longer than the past six months, the official said.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said speculation that the weapons movement came in response to NATO expansion was probably not accurate.

"If that were the case, they wouldn't have done it secretly, presumably they would have made a big public announcement, saying 'we're going to respond this way to NATO expansion'," one official said.

"They didn't do it publicly, they did it secretly, so we don't know why they did this."

Officials said NATO was briefed about the movement of the weapons over a period of months.

"It's more a puzzlement as to why they're doing this, it's not a militarily significant move as far as we can tell," one official said.

Another Pentagon official said: "Russia just wants to be a great nation again."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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The Government of the Russian Federation
The Pentagon: United States Department of Defense
Kaliningrad information
NATO

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