Russia to bolster border with nuclear weapons, missiles if Sweden, Finland join NATO
Summary
- Medvedev says Moscow doesn’t fear the Nordic states but needs to be ready for any retaliatory action
Russia threatened to station ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons on its border if Sweden and Finland are allowed to join NATO, and warned that Ukrainian membership of the military alliance could trigger World War III.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said Moscow didn’t envision any threat from Sweden and Finland as potential North Atlantic Treaty Organization members because past relations with these countries had been “quite respectful and mutually well meaning," but that Russia would still need to be ready for any retaliatory action.
“In the event of such an expansion of NATO, the length of its land borders with Russia will more than double," Mr. Medvedev told government newspaper Argumenty i Fakty in an interview published Tuesday.
“We will have to strengthen these borders. The Baltic region’s nonnuclear status will become a thing of the past, the group of land and naval forces in the northern sector will be seriously increased. No one is happy with this, not the citizens of these two NATO candidate countries," he said.
“It’s not the best prospect for them to have our Iskanders, hypersonic missiles, warships with nuclear weapons on their doorstep," Mr. Medvedev added.
Such a move by Russia would mark a significant intensification of military posturing, since for years Russia has kept nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, its exclave on the Baltic shore, according to officials from neighboring NATO countries. In 2016, Russia began expanding the size and depth of its nuclear-storage facilities there, according to the Federation of American Scientists, a think tank dedicated to nuclear nonproliferation, which published satellite photos of the construction project.
Mr. Medvedev’s comments come as NATO members assembled Tuesday at a summit in Madrid to weigh a volley of pressing matters, including the membership bids of Sweden and Finland, which, if approved, would fundamentally transform the security landscape of Northern Europe and give the alliance a valuable edge against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.
The two Nordic states formally applied for NATO membership last month, presaging a potential break with a decadeslong defense doctrine that has seen them balance political and security partnerships with other Western nations while staying out of formal military alliances.
Mr. Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, underscored that allowing Ukraine to join NATO would be “much more dangerous for our country." Mr. Putin has expressed concern that Ukraine’s membership to the alliance could give Kyiv the incentive to try to retake the Crimean Peninsula.
“For us, Crimea is part of Russia. And this is forever," Mr. Medvedev said. “Any attempt to encroach on Crimea is a declaration of war on our country. And if a country that is a member of NATO does this, this is a conflict with the entire North Atlantic Alliance. Third World War. Total disaster," he warned.
President Vladimir Putin used the perceived threat of NATO to Russia and Ukraine’s potential membership of the bloc as pretexts for invading Ukraine in February. The Kremlin leader had demanded that the alliance reduce its presence in Eastern European countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc and that it commit never to include Ukraine, pull back forces from its east and roll back to its smaller, post-Cold War size. NATO refused to comply.
On Tuesday, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused NATO of being “an aggressive bloc…created for the purpose of confrontation."
“The advancement of NATO infrastructure towards our borders is a process that has been going on for two decades, or even more," Mr. Peskov told reporters at a briefing.
The presidential spokesman said Russia’s military was continuing to work out plans to reinforce its western borders against what it perceives to be new threats from the Western military alliance.
Following Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 and its support for separatists in Ukraine’s east—in regions that the Kremlin has since recognized as being independent—NATO members reinforced their defenses in countries near Russia. The bloc, which says it is purely a defensive organization, has also provided billions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine since the start of the war.
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text
