This is where it first hits if Russia attacks with nuclear weapons

Published 18 August 2024 at 09.48

Domestic. Western sources, according to the Financial Times, have leaked Russian plans drawn up between 2008 and 2014 for “a series of overwhelming strikes across Western Europe”.

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With citing documents from Western security sources, Putin is alleged to have tried to enable the Russian navy to carry out nuclear strikes inside NATO territory where a conflict with the alliance could emerge.

Targets would not be purely military. According to William Alberque, a former NATO official, “there may be hundreds, if not thousands, of targets mapped across Europe, including military and infrastructure targets.”

Russia is also apparently still capable of delivering nuclear weapons on surface ships, which experts say carries a significant risk of escalation or accident.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), signed by the US and Russia in 1991, would have eliminated this possibility, although many have often questioned Moscow's implementation of the agreement.

Possible targets presented by the Financial Times were the west coast of France, military installations in Norway, Germany and Estonia, as well as the British port city of Barrow-in-Furness, known for its production of nuclear submarines.

– They see (tactical nuclear warheads) as potentially peace-enforcing weapons, said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey.

– They will want to use them, and they will want to use them quite quickly.

– There is a global arms race similar to the Cold War of the 1950s and 60s, Anton Bendarzsevszkij, head of the Oeconomus Economic Research Foundation, told the Financial Times.< /p>

Russia is said to have more than 5,500 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, while the United States has just over 5,000, meaning that the two countries control about 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons today.