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Russia may use preventive nuclear strikes to defend itself and its allies, chief of staff says

Russia may use preventive nuclear strikes to defend itself and its allies, Yury Baluyevsky, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said on Saturday, BelaPAN said.

Four-star Army General Baluyevsky was speaking at a scientific conference held at the Academy of Military Sciences in Moscow. Participating in the conference was a Belarusian delegation led by Defense Minister Leanid Maltsaw.

"We have no plans to attack anyone, but we consider it necessary for all our partners in the world community to clearly understand ... 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," Mr. Baluyevsky said, according to the Associated Press.

With the emergence of new threats to security, Russia needs to update a number of provisions in the existing national security concept, he said. "As life is ever-changing, it has become necessary today to update certain provisions of the concept and what is more important is to turn these provisions into a working mechanism for our national security," he noted.

According to the Ekho Moskvy radio station, General Maltsaw joined Russian officials in bitter criticism of Washington’s plans to deploy missile defense facilities in former Soviet satellite states that have joined NATO.

The United States is set to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland as part of its plans to build a system that will let it knock out incoming ballistic missiles potentially coming from North Korea and Iran.

The deployment of US missile defense facilities near Poland’s Belarusian border would lead to “unpredictable consequences” and make Poland a target for potential missile attacks, Mr. Maltsaw said at a meeting of the defense ministers of the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s member states, which was held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, last fall.

“Changing the balance of powers in Europe always leads to unpredictable consequences,” he said. “It poses the biggest threat to the countries that host such facilities as they are targets of first [retaliatory] strikes.”