Putin’s Nuclear Intentions Are Deeply Concerning, NATO Says
BLOOMBERG Ian Wishart 6 hrs ago
(Bloomberg) — The North Atlantic Treaty Organization expressed fears about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear-weapons plans and demanded an immediate halt to his support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
With Putin stepping up Cold War rhetoric, foreign ministers from NATO nations meeting in Antalya, Turkey, urged him to help end the conflict in the battle-scarred region amid signs that Russian-backed rebels are using a cease-fire agreed in February to re-equip and prepare another offensive.
“We are deeply concerned by statements about possible future stationing of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems in Crimea,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday after meeting. “What we see is an increase in cease- fire violations, primarily by the separatists” and “continued Russian support for them.”
Violence has continued in Ukraine’s easternmost regions despite the cease-fire, with NATO accusing the Kremlin of deliberately destabilizing the area following Russia’s annexation of Crimea last year.
Putin told a documentary film aired on Russian television in March that he was ready to put his country’s nuclear forces on alert when he annexed the peninsula.
“This discussion of nukes and the possibility of moving nukes into certain areas or employing nukes if something had not gone correctly in Crimea and all these other things, which have been put out there — this is not responsible language from a nuclear nation,” U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, NATO’s top military commander, told reporters after the meeting.
Geopolitical Confrontation
More than 6,100 people have died and 1 million people have fled their homes in fighting between Ukrainian government forces and the separatists that has sparked the biggest geopolitical confrontation pitting Russia against the U.S. and its European allies for decades.
“Placing nuclear weapons in the Crimea would constitute an immense breach of international obligations for Russia” and “should be followed by the international community in a very decisive and relevant way,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told reporters in Antalya after talking with NATO ministers.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry used the summit to brief lawmakers on talks he held with Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi a few hours before the start of the NATO summit. It was their first face-to-face meeting in two years.
“Critical Moment”
“There was a strong agreement among all NATO members that this is a critical moment for action by Russia, by the separatists,” Kerry said. “This is an enormous moment of opportunity for the conflict there to find a path of certainty and resolution.”
NATO is worried that insurgents may be using the cease-fire to prepare for a possible new offensive in Ukraine, Breedlove said.
“We see training, we see re-equipping, we see new forces, new money, organization, increased command-and-control — all these things are in a pattern across the past several times where we’ve seen a push,” Breedlove told reporters. “And we’ve seen all of that happening during this past cease-fire.”
Having defended Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin has denied it’s spurring the violence in the regions. Putin has repeatedly rejected U.S. and European accusations that he’s aiding rebels with military personnel and equipment.
“Our president firmly emphasized that we are ready for as broad cooperation as possible,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after Tuesday’s talks in Sochi.
–With assistance from Terry Atlas in Washington and Ilya Arkhipov and Henry Meyer in Moscow.
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