Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

to that adopted in the Krasnaya Zvezda article: “But it
should not be forgotten that our country has been
dealing with this problem since the 1990s. We voluntarily
reduced this arsenal, concentrated it on our own
territory, removed it from the field, and warehoused it
in special storage facilities.” In other words, Moscow
has already assumed the moral high ground. 104
Such themes were revisited in a March 2010 article
by Viktor Ruchkin in Krasnaya Zvezda, emphasizing
how Russia had withdrawn nuclear weapons from the
territories of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine following
the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this thesis,
the onus was on the United States to reciprocate and
follow this Russian model. “It is perfectly clear that
the United States must unilaterally and unconditionally
withdraw its TNW from Europe. That would realize
the aspirations of the Europeans, who view those
TNW as a threat to their security, and it would also
correspond to the declared intentions of Washington
to free the planet of nuclear weapons,” Ruchkin asserted.
Nothing could be simpler: Washington must
learn from the virtuous conduct of Russian nuclear
policy. 105 The same author claimed that, far from intending
to withdraw these weapons from Europe,
Washington instead planned to extend their service
lives and modernize them. He provided various figures
on the numbers of combat ready U.S. TNW based
in Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Italy,
and Turkey which appeared incongruous in the context
of the withdrawal of Russian weapons from former
Soviet Republics.
Consequently, for a range of reasons, Moscow
views the tactical nuclear issue as mostly a process
it would like, at least initially, to observe as unfolding
between the United States and its European allies,
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