What will the Russians do in response to NATO’s delivery of F-16s from some NATO base to the Kiev regime? Gilbert Doctorow, in an update column posted yesterday, cited a retired Russian colonel, whom he doesn’t name, appearing on the Vladimir Solovyov talk show on Sunday night, as explaining “that the Kremlin is now considering exactly with what means to destroy such a NATO air base, not whether to do it. And the likely means will be use of tactical nuclear weapons on a Ramstein or whatever NATO base is involved.”
The reason is quite simple: “the first F-16s scheduled to be supplied to the Ukrainian Air Force are from Belgium and Denmark, and are all nuclear-capable, which is not a necessary feature of these planes. Since the Russians are unable to determine what kind of munitions the “Ukrainian” F-16s will actually be delivering to the war zone, they must assume that they are carrying tactical nuclear bombs intended to be dropped on the Russian Army troop concentrations. The effect of such an attack could be devastating, hence the Russian threat to the air bases from which such planes are launched.”
Note: Belgium hosts US B-61 nuclear bombs and is part of NATO’s nuclear sharing program while Denmark is not, though it otherwise supports NATO’s nuclear mission with conventional capabilities (as do Poland, Greece and a number of other countries).—ed.
Doctorow continues: “The next important revelation made during the Solovyov show came with respect to the first delivery of tactical nuclear weapons to Minsk which was marked by a visit to Belarus and interview with Lukashenko by the co-host of the Sixty Minutes news and discussion show Olga Skabeyeva. In answer to her question about where the nuclear warheads are being stored, Lukashenko said ‘everywhere.’ ... this signifies a cardinal shift in the Russian handling of tactical nuclear arms away from their traditional separation of the warheads kept in a central storage far from the delivery carriers to the method used by the U.S. military with respect to its tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. ... in Belarus, the warheads will also be just next to the planes and Iskander missiles that will carry them. This means that the time to launch will depend only on the time for approval from the Boss. And with respect to that, Lukashenko told Skabeyeva that he had just to make a phone call to Vladimir Vladimirovich and approval would be instantaneous.”
Furthermore, “today’s article in The Financial Times on how Poland is now preparing hundreds of Belarus fighters to go across the border and overthrow Lukashenko.” (It’s actually in the Times, not the FT—ed.) Doctorow’s point is that Belarus sees this Polish activity as an existential threat and would treat it as such.
Doctorow continues further: “Still another item from the Solovyov show demanding our attention concerns what the good colonel calls the American response to the shipment of nuclear arms to Belarus: America now plans to install tactical nuclear weapons in Romania and Poland. Why, one might ask, in those two countries? For that you need only consider what the Kremlin has been saying for more than a decade about the U.S. bases set up in both countries supposedly to house anti-ballistic missile systems intended to bring down Iranian missiles fired on Europe.”
Note: The US Navy retired all of its nuclear armed cruise missiles in the 2011-2013 time period. The 2018 Trump Nuclear Posture Review called for the development of a new nuclear-armed cruise missile for deployment onboard submarines but the Biden Administration has not proceeded with its development. That said, were the Russians to come to the conclusion that the US had indeed installed Tomahawk cruise missiles in the Polish and Romanian installations, they might treat them as if they were nuclear-armed anyway. —ed.
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/06/19/tactical-nuclear-weapons-latest-news-from-russia/
