http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2008/01/21/017.html
Monday, January 21, 2008. Page 5
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Baluyevsky Warns Of Nuclear Defense
By Steve Gutterman
The Associated Press
AP
Baluyevsky
The country's top military officer said Saturday that Moscow could use nuclear
weapons in preventive strikes to protect itself and its allies, the latest
aggressive remarks from increasingly assertive Russian authorities.
General Yury Baluyevsky's comment did not mark a policy shift, military
analysts said. Amid disputes with the West over security issues, it may have
been meant as a warning that Russia is prepared to use its nuclear might.
"We do not intend to attack anyone, but we consider it necessary for all our
partners in the world community to understand clearly ... that to defend the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces
will be used, including preventively, including with the use of nuclear
weapons," Baluyevsky said at a military conference in remarks broadcast on
state-run cable channel Vesti-24.
Baluyevsky added that Russia would use nuclear weapons and carry out preventive
strikes only "in cases specified by the doctrinal documents of the Russian
Federation," RIA-Novosti reported.
The national military doctrine approved by President Vladimir Putin in 2000
says Russia may use nuclear weapons to counter a nuclear attack on Russia or an
ally, or a large-scale conventional attack that poses a critical risk to
Russia's security.
Retired General Vladimir Dvorkin, formerly a top arms control expert with the
Defense Ministry, said he saw "nothing new" in Baluyevsky's statement. "He was
restating the doctrine in his own words," Dvorkin said.
Moscow-based military analyst Alexander Golts said that when Russia broke with
stated Soviet-era policy in the 2000 doctrine and declared it could use nuclear
weapons first against an aggressor, it reflected the decline of Russia's
conventional forces in the decade following the 1991 Soviet collapse.
"Baluyevsky's statement means that, as before, we cannot count on our
conventional forces to counter aggression," Golts said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
"It means that, as before, the main factor in containing aggression against
Russia is nuclear weapons."
Putin and other Russian officials have stressed the need to maintain a powerful
nuclear deterrent and reserved the right to carry out preventive strikes.
Putin, who has sought to boost his popularity at home and win support abroad
with his vocal criticism of U.S. foreign policy, has said Russia opposes the
use of preventive military attacks but reserves the right to carry them out
because other countries do so.
But in most of their public remarks on preventive strikes, Russian officials
have not specifically mentioned nuclear weapons, and top officials have said
preventive strikes against terrorists would not involve nuclear weapons.
Baluyevsky spoke at a time of increasingly strained relations between Moscow
and the West.
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