Steven Pifer, former US ambassador to Ukraine, hit the nail on the head with his assessment on how Moscow operates. They claim their moves are a counter-move to the West, however, their plans were made long beforehand. They provoke nations into making a move, then claim to be the victim and respond accordingly. They’re having their cake and eating it, too. They are experts at this type of deception.
Kaliningrad will host the missiles
RUSSIA plans to station advanced nuclear-capable missiles deep inside Europe – putting vast swathes of the continent in the crosshairs of Moscow’s short-range ballistic missile programme.
Kremlin insiders say the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad – on the Baltic Sea wedged between Poland and Lithuania – will host the Iskander missile – dubbed the Stone by Nato.
Crimea, which was annexed from the Ukraine in 2014, could also host a second Iskander missile base, Russian defence sources claim.
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The move is in defiance of a US-backed Nato missile shield that was erected in Romania last month, with a second planned for Poland in 2018.
With a range of roughly 300 miles, the Iskander missile could hit targets as far away as eastern Germany, the entire Baltic region and Poland, as well as parts of Sweden.
But experts say the targets it will cover can be struck by longer-range Russian missiles anyway.
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Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, said there was a “long history in Moscow of saying what they’re doing is in response to what you guys did, even though they planned it in advance”.
Moscow is thought likely to wait until the planned Polish missile defence site opens in two years time before it unveils a more serious response.
The Kremlin has often threatened to put nuclear-capable missiles in Kaliningrad as a riposte to the shield.
Mikhail Barabanov, a senior research fellow at the Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, which advises the Russian Defence Ministry, said it was now “inevitable” that the Kremlin would deploy the missiles there permanently by 2019.
The Iskander, a mobile ballistic missile system codenamed SS-26 Stone by north Atlantic military alliance which replaced the Soviet Scud missile and can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.
Full article: Russia to deploy NUCLEAR-capable ballistic missiles in the heart of EUROPE (Express)
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