Russia said on Saturday that the accelerated deployment of modernised US B61 tactical nuclear weapons at NATO bases in Europe would lower the “nuclear threshold” and that Moscow would take the move into account in its military planning.
The United States told a closed NATO meeting this month that it would accelerate the deployment of modernised weapons arriving at European bases several months earlier than planned, according to Politico.
Its report said that an upgraded version of the B61, the B61-12, would be delivered in December.
“We cannot ignore the plans to modernize nuclear weapons, those free-fall bombs that are in Europe,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told state RIA news agency.
“The United States is modernising them, increasing their accuracy and reducing the power of the nuclear charge, that is, they turn these weapons into ‘battlefield weapons’, thereby reducing the nuclear threshold.”
The 12-ft B61-12 gravity bomb carries a lower yield nuclear warhead than many earlier versions but is more accurate and can penetrate below ground, according to research by the Federation of American Scientists published in 2016.
A Pentagon spokesman quoted by Politico said nuclear details would not be discussed but that the modernisation of B61 weapons had been underway for years.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered the gravest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the two Cold War superpowers came closest to nuclear war.
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