*NATO urgently moved a sophisticated military piece to Romania.
It operates at a distance of over 450 kilometers. NATO has moved its most sophisticated radar from Italy to the village of Cataloi in Tulcea county. For several months, NATO surveillance and air control experts will support the Alliance's surveillance activities on the eastern flank.
The state-of-the-art radar can detect and track targets from over 450 km away.
The move of the radar approximately 8 km from Tulcea was decided in the context in which, in recent months, Russia has intensified its attacks on Romania's border with Ukraine. Tags: Russia, Ukraine, war, NATO, Romania,
Several drone remains have arrived on the territory of Romania.
FT: Russia trained to hit 32 targets in Europe, including Romania, with nuclear weapons. Map of Moscow targets.
Russia has been training its navy to target targets inside Europe, including Romania, with nuclear-capable missiles in a potential conflict with NATO, according to secret files seen by the Financial Times.
Maps of targets as far away as the west coast of France or Barrow-in-Furness in the United Kingdom are detailed in a briefing for Russian officers that preceded the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The FT previously reported, based on the same archive of 29 secret Russian military files, that Moscow had repeatedly used tactical nuclear weapons in the early stages of a conflict with a major world power.
Now, the latest revelations show how Russia envisioned a conflict with the West that would go far beyond the immediate border with NATO, planning a series of overwhelming strikes in Western Europe. The documents were presented to the FT by Western sources.
Russia has been making plans since 2008
The files, compiled between 2008 and 2014, include a list of targets for missiles that can carry either conventional warheads or tactical nuclear weapons. Russian officers emphasize, according to the documents, the advantages of using nuclear strikes from an early stage.
The presentation also indicates that Russia has retained the ability to carry nuclear weapons on surface ships, a capability that experts say carries significant risks of escalation or accidents.
The document maintains that the navy's "high maneuverability" allows it to carry out "sudden and preemptive strikes" and "massive missile strikes from various directions." It adds that nuclear weapons are "usually" intended to be used "in combination with other means of destruction" to achieve Russia's goals.
Analysts who reviewed the documents said they were consistent with NATO's assessment of the threat of long-range missile attacks by the Russian navy and the speed with which Russia would likely resort to using nuclear weapons.
32 targets in Europe
The maps, which were made for presentation purposes rather than operational use, the FT maintains, depict a sample of 32 NATO targets in Europe for Russia's naval fleets.
Thus, the targets of the Russian fleet in the Baltic Sea are mostly located in Norway and Germany - including the Bergen naval base, as well as radar and special forces sites.
Russia's North Sea fleet is supposed to target defense industrial target such as the submarine shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness in North West England. A target near Hull may be an industrial site - it is marked with a chimney. The presentation also illustrates how its doctrine could apply in possible wars in the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the Pacific.
As for the Black Sea, the map shows three targets from Romania (apparently the Deveselu base, the Mihail Kogalniceanu base and the Giurgiu-Ruse bridge), two from Bulgaria and five from Turkey.
Russian scenarios include wars with current NATO allies, but also with China, Iran, Azerbaijan and North Korea. William Alberque, a former NATO official who now works at the Stimson Center, commented that the sample of targets only a small fraction of “ hundreds, if not thousands, of targets mapped across Europe, including targets and critical infrastructure."
The Russian concept of total war
Russia's ability to strike across Europe means targets across the continent would be at risk if its military engaged NATO forces in front-line countries such as the Baltic states and Poland, analysts and former officials said. officials. "Their concept of war is total war," warns Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey who studies arms control. "They see these things (tactical nuclear warheads) as weapons with the potential to win the war," he added. "They're going to want to use them, and they're going to want to use them pretty quickly," the analyst says.
Tactical nuclear weapons, which can be launched by land-based or sea-based missiles or aircraft, have a shorter range and are less destructive than larger "strategic" weapons designed to target the US. However, they can still release much more energy than those dropped on the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has repeatedly resorted to threats against Ukraine's European allies to avoid Western military support for Kiev. "They have to remember that they are small, densely populated states," he said in May.
The Russian presentation also maintains the option of a so-called demonstration attack - the detonation of a nuclear weapon in a remote area "during a period of immediate threat of aggression" before a real conflict, in order to scare Western countries. Russia has not acknowledged that such strikes are part of its doctrine. According to the files, such a strike would demonstrate "the availability and readiness to use non-strategic precision nuclear weapons" and "the intent to use nuclear weapons."
Alberque, a former director of NATO's Center for Arms Control, Disarmament and the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, explained: "They want the Russian nuclear weapons use team to be the magic key that unlocks Western consent."
What Russia wants from a conflict with NATO
The files show that Russia's main priority in a conflict with NATO is "weakening the enemy's military and economic potential." Analysts said this meant Russia would hit civilian sites and critical infrastructure, as it did in Ukraine.
Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral researcher at the University of Oslo who studies nuclear policy, said that a combination of nuclear and conventional strikes, as presented in that briefing to Russian officers, constitutes "a package to basically signal to the adversary that in this . moment is really heating up. And it would be wise of you to start talking to us about how we can solve the problem," is the message Moscow would like to convey, according to the researcher.
According to NATO calculations, the alliance countries have less than 5% of the air defense capabilities needed to protect the alliance's eastern flank against a large-scale attack by Russia. Putin said in June that Europe would be "more or less defenseless" against Russian missile attacks.
Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Russian strategists viewed nuclear weapons as essential in the early stages of any conflict with NATO in part because of their military's inferior conventional resources. "They just don't have enough missiles," she said.
The leaked documents also indicate that Russia has retained the ability to carry tactical nuclear weapons on surface ships, despite a 1991 agreement between the Soviet Union and the US to eliminate them.
Russia recently held military exercises for tactical nuclear weapons
Russia's tactical nuclear weapons carriers include "nuclear-warhead anti-submarine missiles located on surface ships and submarines" and "ship- and shore-based anti-aircraft missiles with nuclear warheads to defeat enemy air defense groups."
Unlike a strategic ballistic missile submarine designed to launch nuclear warheads from the ocean depths, a surface fleet vessel with nuclear warheads on board would be much more at risk of damage from storm or enemy strike.
Recent exercises ordered by Putin to rehearse the use of tactical nuclear weapons indicate that the leaked documents are still in line with current Russian military doctrine, the Financial Times concludes.
In June, Russia's armed forces practiced loading Soviet-era P-270 anti-ship cruise missiles on a Tarantul-class corvette in Kaliningrad, where NATO officials say Russia has an undeclared stockpile of tactical nuclear warheads. Footage from the exercise shows the troops in custody of the Russian military's nuclear warheads practicing moving the missile into the container they would use to move a complete nuclear-armed missile, accompanied by security forces and procedures for handling the one. nuclear warhead.
Övriga genrer (Översättning)
av Jeflea Norma, Diana.
Publicerad 2024-08-21 20:32