Sunday, August 17, 2008

Moscow makes another nuclear threat

Having blithely threatened Poland with nuclear attack, the Russian leadership has apparently decided to follow this up with another such threat: the Sunday Times quotes a "senior military source in Moscow" as saying that "nuclear warheads could be supplied to submarines, cruisers and fighter bombers of the Baltic fleet based in Kaliningrad". This "press leak" is clearly intended for Western consumption, and should probably be treated with a modest dose of skepticism - given the current stance of the Russian government, the content of the statement is of less significance than its timing and form: it should - for the moment, at least -  be read as simply one more effort by Moscow to show its contempt for world opinion.

No comments: