Russian President Vladimir Putin pushed back against Western criticism over Moscow\u2019s announced plans to practice the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, describing the drill as routine \u201cplanned work\u201d for Russia\u2019s military.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is nothing unusual here, this is a planned exercise,\u201d Putin stated in remarks released Thursday. His comments came after the Kremlin said on Monday that Russian forces would practice \u201cthe deployment of tactical nuclear weapons\u201d in an upcoming military exercise.<\/p>\n
The drills would involve the practice use of nuclear weapons from Russia\u2019s stockpile of shorter-range, battlefield munitions. That prompted condemnation from NATO members like the United States, Britain and France as an escalation that could stoke nuclear tensions.<\/p>\n
But in his comments, Putin appeared to downplay the nuclear element as simply part of Russia\u2019s regular training schedule, accusing the West of overreacting.<\/p>\n
The Russian leader\u2019s defence of the drills came as he delivered a speech in Moscow marking Victory Day, the anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. As has become traditional, Putin used the commemorations to lash out at Russia\u2019s present-day geopolitical foes.<\/p>\n
He accused \u201cthe West\u201d of trying to \u201cdistort\u201d the history and legacy of World War II, which he claimed interfered with its modern \u201ccolonial policy.\u201d Putin has frequently sought to portray Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine as an existential struggle against alleged neo-Nazism.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia has never belittled the importance of the Second Front and the help of the allies,\u201d he said, referring to the Allied campaigns against Hitler\u2019s forces in Western Europe towards the end of the war. \u201cRussia honours all the forces that fought against Nazism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toward the end of his speech, Putin made an oblique reference to the nuclear drill controversy, stating that \u201cif someone again decides to betray Russia and wants to strike at our country, our response will be lightning fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Victory Day speech offered a glimpse into the Kremlin\u2019s potential justification for the nuclear weapons drill \u2013 portraying it as preparation to defend against perceived Western aggression against Russia, just as the Soviet Union fought off invasion during World War II.<\/p>\n
While Russia maintains the drills do not signal any intent to use nuclear weapons, NATO has warned that any exercises involving tactical nukes increase the risk of a devastating miscalculation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The drills would involve the practice use of nuclear weapons from Russia\u2019s stockpile of shorter-range, battlefield munitions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":406,"featured_media":16381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[468,280,282,78,215,10283],"class_list":["post-16380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","tag-kremlin","tag-nato","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-victory-day"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}