RS-24 Yars ballistic missiles. © Photo Defense Ministry press service
Reuters: Risk of nuclear war in Europe growing, warns Russian ex-minister
The East-West standoff over the Ukraine crisis has brought the threat of nuclear war in Europe closer than at any time since the 1980s, a former Russian foreign minister warned on Saturday.
"The risk of confrontation with the use of nuclear weapons in Europe is higher than in the 1980s," said Igor Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister from 1998 to 2004 and now head of a Moscow-based think-tank founded by the Russian government.
While Russia and the United States have cut their nuclear arsenals, the pace is slowing. As of January 2015, they had just over 7,000 nuclear warheads each, about 90 percent of world stocks, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
"We have less nuclear warheads, but the risk of them being used is growing," Ivanov said at a Brussels event with the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Poland and a U.S. lawmaker.
NATO's secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has warned Russia of intimidating its neighbors with talk about nuclear weapons, publicly voicing concerns among Western officials.
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WNU Editor: I do not share this point of view. Tensions are high, and a small arms build-up in Europe is under-way. But we are nowhere near the tensions that existed during the Cold War .. and the threat of a nuclear war is definitely low. What is causing the east-west divide right now is Ukraine. Solve Ukraine .... tensions will drop appreciably. Unfortunately .... the two sides in Ukraine are not interested in talking right now .... hence the situation we are in today.
2 comments:
The greatest threat of nuclear war in Europe is the intense belief in Putin that Russian supremacy and dominance is more important than peace or stability. You can't have peace with a tyrant, who is willing to destroy his way to dominance. Same goes with China.
No nuclear war, unless the west try to invade Russia again.
A possible field of war is the non-NATO Eastern Europe that end like Ukraine, or if Ukraine join NATO and push to military solutions.
Putin need to reassure their neighbors instead of menacing it, and EU need to stop to act like a dog of Washington.
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