Photo: Alexey Maishev / TASS
Former Russian President and Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has openly stated that new NATO members automatically become potential targets for the Russian armed forces, including nuclear strikes in the event of a conflict. This was reported by the state news agency TASS.
“Each new member of the Alliance is a new target. Including for nuclear deterrence measures or even pre-emptive strikes,” Medvedev said in a speech to journalists.
His statement is a direct threat to the newly-accessed countries to the Alliance – primarily Sweden and Finland, which joined NATO after Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine.
The former Russian president criticised their withdrawal from neutrality, calling it “political games” that, in his words , “do not improve people’s lives, but only put them in the crosshairs of Russian missiles”.
Medvedev’s comments once again demonstrate nuclear blackmail as the main tool of Russian foreign policy and confirm the security threats in the Baltic and Northern Europe.
