US to redeploy nuclear weapons to UK in response to Russian threat

[Compiled and published by New Sancai] According to Pentagon documents seen by The Daily Telegraph, thermonuclear weapons will return to the UK through the US military in 15 years.

The documents detail what the B61-12 gravity bomb would look like, which would be three times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, yet smaller and capable of being dropped by conventional fighter jets. The weapons will be stored at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England.

In 2008, when it was determined that the Cold War was over and the military threat from Russia had receded, the United States withdrew missiles from Britain. According to reports, the return of these weapons has unsettled many people, including Moscow, who said as early as September 2023 that the move would be seen as an "escalatory and destabilizing approach."

The Pentagon has ordered equipment, including ballistic shields, for Lakenheath and said it would begin construction of a 144-bed facility for U.S. Air Force soldiers in June, according to unredacted documents in a U.S. Department of Defense procurement database. housing facilities.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Russia would view any return of U.S. nuclear weapons to British bases as "an escalatory and destabilizing move." She said: "At a time when the United States and NATO are turning to overt confrontation, In the context of a "strategic failure" for Russia, this approach and its development force us to take compensatory countermeasures to reliably protect Russia's security."

According to the Daily Telegraph, a spokesman for the British Ministry of Defense said: "It remains the long-term policy of the United Kingdom and NATO to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at specific locations."

Zakharova added that the Kremlin would be forced to take countermeasures to "safeguard the security interests of our country (Russia) and its allies," without specifying what those countermeasures would be.

The transfer of U.S. nuclear weapons to Britain is just the latest in a series of ongoing tensions stemming from Russia's war with Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the downing of a Russian plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners scheduled for a prisoner exchange.

(Compiled by: Wang Jimin)

(Editor: Jiang Qiming)

(Source of the article: First published by Xinsancai)