The Financial Times has obtained secret Russian military files which detail how Russian forces train to use tactical nuclear weapons against both NATO and China.
A story-map in the article Russian navy trained to target sites inside Europe with nuclear-capable missiles (paywalled) shows a number of target locations in Europe and the Pacific for Russian conventional and nuclear missiles. In the Pacific these targets include cities in both China and North Korea, who are normally seen as allies of Russia.
Targets in Europe include cities in France, Germany, Norway and the UK. The FT claims that the Russian military files "describe a threshold for using tactical nuclear weapons that is lower than Russia has ever publicly admitted".
According to Sweden's SVT Russia currently has 5,580 nuclear warheads. SVT's recent investigation into World Nuclear Forces includes a quote from the Swedish government that the "Russian population is being primed for a scenario in which it will be considered legitimate for Russia to use nuclear weapons".
The World Nuclear Forces article includes an interactive nuclear warhead simulator which allows you to explore the likely impact of different types of nuclear warhead on different locations around the world. For example in the screenshot above I have used the simulator to explore the effect of a 100 kiloton Russian warhead dropped on Shenyang (one of the Russian targets in China identified by the Russian military files).
No comments:
Post a Comment