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Against Background of World Cup, Russia Restores Nuclear Potential of Kaliningrad

 Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 97, The Jamestown Foundation, By: Sergey SukhankinJune 25, 2018   Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast is currently hosting several of the games of the World Cup soccer championship, but this Baltic exclave has recently attracted widespread attention for an entirely different reason. On June 18, Western media reported on Russia apparently undertaking ambitious renovation works on a military bunker located in the oblast, which is to be used to store nuclear weapons. This was corroborated by satellite images. The director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, Hans M. Kristensen, has claimed that “during the past two years, the Russian military has carried out a major renovation of what appears to be an active nuclear weapons storage site in the Kaliningrad region, about 50 kilometers from the Polish border” (Kyiv Post, June 18; Poland Radio, June 19). The Swiss paper Tages-Anzeiger additionally argued that, thanks to the renewed infrastructure, should a major crisis break out, the Russian side would be able to rapidly deploy to the exclave non-strategic nuclear weaponry currently stored in the central part of the Russian Federation. This would expose all of Poland to a potential strike (Inopressa.ru, June 20).

On the basis of the available images, Russian sources have been able to identify the location of the reported bunker: between the villages Kulikovo and Zviagintsevo (Rosbalt, June 18). Although, data presented last year strongly suggested that a greater number of such sites in Kaliningrad could be used in a similar capacity (Bmpd.livejournal.com, March 27, 2017). The majority of Russian outlets have only partially agreed with the recent information reported in the Western media. ……..https://jamestown.org/program/against-background-of-world-cup-russia-restores-nuclear-potential-of-kaliningrad/

June 27, 2018 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general