Russia says U.S. nuclear threat may require nuclear response
REUTERS
OCT 31, 2015
NOVO-OGARYOVO, RUSSIA – Russia would have to respond to a large U.S. nuclear attack with its own nuclear force, a senior government official said on Friday, and also should revive the Cold War practice of training civilians on how to respond to such an attack.
Speaking after a meeting of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister in charge the defense industry, said the United States is upsetting the nuclear balance by developing new weapons systems.
Russia has no choice but to react to the aggressive capabilities of the United States, he said.
“Measures for countering the aggressor could include those that concern Russia’s strategic nuclear capability — that is, reciprocal measures so that, God forbid, no one gets a crazy idea in their head,” Rogozin said.
There could be other measures “so that the population, if nonetheless they were subject to that kind of aggression, could avoid colossal losses. … Civil defense should be re-created,” he said.
During the Cold War, Soviet authorities built a system of bomb shelters in case of a nuclear attack. School children were trained how to put on protective masks, and posters telling people how to respond hung in schools and workplaces.
Many Soviet citizens were skeptical that any of the precautions could save them if there was an attack, but the training, known as civil defense, was compulsory.
The practice was abandoned under the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who with U.S. leaders negotiated a program of nuclear arms cuts that eased tensions.
But under Putin, relations between Washington and Moscow have soured, with the two sides at loggerheads over the conflict in Ukraine, ways to end the crisis in Syria and human rights issues.
The Russian leader has spoken often of the United States and its allies encroaching into Eastern Europe and threatening Russia’s national security.
At a forum in the southern Russian city of Sochi in October, he said a missile shield planned by the U.S. military is a direct threat to Russia’s nuclear capability.
