Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

leaders like Lieutenant General Yevgeny Bushinsky,
former head of the Defense Ministry’s International
Legal Department, argue that Russia should only enter
into negotiations on TNW in case of parity in conventional
armaments between Russia and the United
States, i.e., never. 53 This is because TNW are Moscow’s
deterrent in a situation of conventional inferiority like
the present. 54 Worse yet, the Navy plans to introduce
new TNW in the form of nuclear cruise missiles on its
submarines. 55 In any case, as Swedish Foreign Minister
Carl Bildt has stated regarding Russian threats in
the Baltic: “According to the information to which we
have access, there are already tactical nuclear weapons
in the Kaliningrad area. They are located both at
and in the vicinity of units belonging to the Russian
fleet,” 56 This means that Russia has effectively violated
the Bush-Yeltsin Presidential Nuclear Initiatives
of 1991-92, which barred TNW from naval vessels.
Finally, Chief of Staff General Nikolai Makarov has
publicly stated that Russia will retain its TNW as long
as Europe is “packed with armaments” as a guarantee
of Russian security and that priority of funding will be
directed to Russia’s nuclear arsenal. 57
In other words, believing a priori that Europe is the
site of a presumptive enemy action against it, Russia
demands as a condition of its security that the rest of
Europe be insecure. Russia’s defense doctrine openly
says that the United States and NATO represent the
main threats to Russian security and that Washington
will continue to seek military supremacy and disregard
international law for a generation. 58 Furthermore,
unlike the United States, Russia is engaged in a comprehensive
modernization and renewal of all of its
nuclear weapons, clearly in the belief that it needs to
deter America by military means, and maybe even to
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