Tag Archives: NATO

Putin says Russia must strengthen as ‘aggressive’ NATO approaches

Russian President Putin

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia must boost its combat readiness in response to NATO’s “aggressive actions” near Russia’s borders, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.

Addressing parliament on the 75th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, Putin berated the West for being unwilling to build “a modern, non-bloc collective security system” with Russia.

“Russia is open to discuss this crucial issue and has more than once shown its readiness for dialogue,” he said. “But, just as it happened on the eve of World War Two, we do not see a positive reaction in response.”

“On the contrary, NATO is strengthening its aggressive rhetoric and its aggressive actions near our borders. In these conditions, we are duty-bound to pay special attention to solving the task of strengthening the combat readiness of our country.”

The U.S.-led military alliance is increasing its defenses in Poland and the three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as part of a wider deterrent that it hopes will discourage Russia from any repetition of its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.

Russia sees NATO’s deterrence plans as hostile.

Drawing historic parallels with the 1930s, Putin said humanity now faced a danger of failing to withstand the fast-spreading threat of terrorism, just as it once failed to unite against the rising power of Nazi Germany.

“The world community did not show enough vigilance, will and consolidation to prevent that war and save millions of lives,” Putin said.

“What kind of a lesson is still needed today to discard old and frayed ideological disagreements and geopolitical games and to unite in the fight against international terrorism?”

(Reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Maria Kiselyova and Richard Balmforth)

Separate bomb attacks kill at least 22 in Afghanistan

Officials cleaning the site of the bombing June 20 2016

By Mirwais Harooni

KABUL (Reuters) – More than 20 people were killed in separate bomb attacks in Afghanistan on Monday, including at least 14 when a suicide bomber struck a minibus carrying Nepali security contractors in the capital Kabul, officials said.

A Reuters witness saw several apparently dead victims and at least two wounded being carried out of the remains of a yellow bus after the suicide bomber struck the vehicle in the capital.

Hours later, a bomb planted in a motorbike killed at least eight civilians and wounded another 18 in a crowded market in the northern province of Badakhshan, said provincial government spokesman Naveed Frotan. The casualty count could rise, he said.

The attacks are the latest in a surge of violence that highlights the challenges faced by the government in Kabul and its Western backers as Washington considers whether to delay plans to cut the number of its troops in Afghanistan.

Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said on Twitter that 14 people had been killed and eight wounded in the attack in Kabul. Police were working to identify the victims, he said.

The casualties appeared to include Afghan civilians and Nepali security contractors, Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said, after police and emergency vehicles surrounded the scene in the Banae district in the east of the city.

He said the suicide bomber had waited near a compound housing the security contractors and struck as the vehicle moved through early morning traffic. Besides the bus passengers, several people in an adjacent market were also wounded in the attack during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Kabul attack in a statement from the Islamist group’s main spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, on Twitter. However it denied responsibility for the attack in Badakhshan.

Islamic State, which is bitterly opposed by the Taliban, said it carried out the Kabul attack but Zabihullah Mujahid dismissed the claim as “rubbish”.

“By organizing this attack, we wanted to show Americans and NATO military officials that we can conduct attacks wherever, and whenever, we want,” the Taliban spokesman said.

The Nepal government was still working through its embassy in Pakistan, which also oversees Afghanistan, to verify reports that its citizens were involved in the attack, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bharat Paudel said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent his condolences to his two South Asian neighbors after the attack.

“We strongly condemn the horrible tragedy in Kabul. Our deep condolences to people and governments of Afghanistan and Nepal on loss of innocent lives,” Modi said on Twitter.

Another explosion in Kabul later on Monday morning wounded a provincial council member and at least three of his bodyguards, Kabul police spokesman Basir Mujahid said. It was thought a bomb had been attached to the lawmaker’s car, he said.

The attacks underlined how serious the security threat facing Afghanistan remains since former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike last month and was replaced by Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.

The blasts follow a deadly suicide attack on a bus carrying justice ministry staff near Kabul last month and a separate attack on a court in the central city of Ghazni on June 1.

The Taliban claimed both those attacks in revenge for the execution of six Taliban prisoners.

(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Hamid Shalizi; Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU and Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Paul Tait and Clarence Fernandez)

U.S. says it will stay in Black Sea despite Russian warning

Navy missile destroyer in Black Sea

By Steve Scherer

ABOARD THE USS MASON (Reuters) – The United States will maintain its presence in the Black Sea despite a Russian warning that a U.S. destroyer patrolling there undermined regional security, the U.S. Navy Secretary said.

The USS Porter entered the Black Sea this month, drawing heavy criticism from Moscow. Turkey and Romania are expected to push for a bigger NATO presence in the Black Sea at the NATO summit in Warsaw next month.

Aboard the USS Mason, another U.S. destroyer, in the Mediterranean on Thursday, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told Reuters that it was the U.S. Navy’s job to deter aggression and keep sea lanes open.

“We’re going to be there,” Mabus said of the Black Sea. “We’re going to deter. That’s the main reason we’re there — to deter potential aggression.”

Mabus spoke days after Russia criticized NATO discussions about a creating a permanent force in the Black Sea.

“If a decision is made to create a permanent force, of course, it would be destabilizing, because this is not a NATO sea,” Russian news agencies quoted senior Foreign Ministry official Andrei Kelin as saying.

Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, has its own Black Sea Fleet based at Sevastopol.

The NATO summit takes place as relations between Russia and the alliance are severely strained over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine crisis and in Syria. While Russia says it poses no threat to alliance, NATO is considering what to do to counter what it sees as growing Russian aggression.

Mabus said the United States follows the rules of the Montreux Convention, which states that countries without a Black Sea coastline cannot keep their warships there for more than 21 days. NATO members Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria are all Black Sea Basin countries.

Bulgaria appeared to buckle to Russian pressure on Thursday. Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said he would not join a proposed NATO fleet in the Black Sea because it should be a place for holidays and tourists, not war.

Also increasing tensions with Moscow is the U.S. Navy’s deployment of two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean ahead the NATO summit as Washington seeks to balance an increase in Russian military activities in the Mediterranean.

“We’ve been in the Mediterranean continuously for 70 years now, since World War Two,” Mabus said. “We’ve been keeping the sea lanes open…It’s what we do.”

(Reporting by Steve Scherer; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Massive cyber attack could trigger NATO response: Stoltenberg

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg

BERLIN (Reuters) – A major cyber attack could trigger a collective response by NATO, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview published by Germany’s Bild newspaper on Thursday.

“A severe cyber attack may be classified as a case for the alliance. Then NATO can and must react,” the newspaper quoted Stoltenberg as saying. “How, that will depend on the severity of the attack.”

He spoke after a decision this week by NATO ministers to designate cyber as an official operational domain of warfare, along with air, sea, and land.

In 2014 the U.S.-led alliance assessed that cyber attacks could potentially trigger NATO’S mutual defense guarantee, or Article 5. That means NATO could potentially respond to a cyber attack with conventional weapons, although the response would be decided by consensus.

The NATO chief told Bild that the alliance needed to adjust to the increasingly complex series of threats it faces, which is why NATO members have agreed to defend against attacks in cyberspace just as they do against attacks launched against targets on land, in the air and at sea.

The United States and other NATO states have become increasingly vocal about cyber attacks launched from Russia, China and Iran, but officials say it remains hard to determine if such attacks stem from government bodies or private groups.

Recognizing cyber as an official domain of warfare will allow NATO to improve planning and better manage resources, training and personnel needs for cyber defense operations, said a NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official stressed that NATO’s cyber activities would remain purely defensive. “We have no offensive cyber doctrine or offensive cyber capability. And there are no plans for NATO as a body to use such capabilities. NATO’s core cyber defense task is to defend NATO’s own networks,” said the official.

Individual members have already declared cyber an operational warfare domain, including the United States, which said in 2011 that it would respond to hostile attacks in cyberspace as it would to any other threat.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Dan Grebler and Mark Heinrich)

NATO says Ukraine ceasefire barely holding, scolds Russia

NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg briefs the media during a NATO defence ministers meeting in Brussels

By Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Russia is violating an internationally-agreed ceasefire in Ukraine “again and again”, NATO’s chief said on Wednesday, accusing Moscow of continuing to arm separatists in the conflict at the center of East-West tensions.

Some European governments are eager to lift the economic sanctions that the West has levied on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis.

But the assertions by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg of continued fighting and Russian support would make it difficult to ease any penalties under the terms of the Minsk peace deal.

“The ceasefire is violated again and again, and this is of great concern,” Stoltenberg told a news conference following a meeting about Ukraine with NATO defense ministers. “Russia supports the separatists … with equipment, with weapons. They also mass troops along the Ukrainian border,” he said.

There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin, which has denied any direct support for the rebels. Moscow returned to Kiev jailed Ukrainian military pilot Nadezhda Savchenko last month, in a prisoner exchange welcomed by Western politicians.

Europe and the United States have linked any softening of the economic sanctions on implementation of the peace deal signed in Minsk in February 2015, which calls for a full ceasefire in the rebel-held areas of Donetsk and Luhansk.

EU leaders must decide at a June 28-29 summit whether to extend sanctions on Russia’s financial, defense and energy sectors over what the West says is Moscow’s support for separatists in the conflict that has killed more than 9,000 people since April 2014.

OSCE international observers recorded more than 200 explosions on Sunday and Monday in eastern Ukraine, as well as shelling, heavy-machine-gun fire and grenade attacks that destroyed buildings and left craters in the ground.

Asked about the report, Stoltenberg said: “We see many ceasefire violations over a long period of time. There are also many casualties. Ukrainian soldiers have lost their lives.”

Ukraine’s defense minister, who joined NATO defense ministers for their meeting in Brussels, said civilians were being shelled in the city of Donetsk and that Russian-backed rebels were increasingly using heavy weapons.

“We have evidence that separatists are firing at Donetsk,” Stepan Poltorak told a separate news conference.

“How can we talk about a ceasefire when it is violated 50 or 60 times a day, when we have soldiers wounded every day? Violations are made by heavy artillery, which is banned by Minsk,” he said.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Andrew Heavens)

Baltics fear NATO plans too small to deter Russia

Lithuanian army officer Rocevicius looks at construction site of the newly built training premises for urban warfare in Pabrade

By Robin Emmott and Andrius Sytas

VILNIUS (Reuters) – Leaders in the Baltic countries and Poland fear the force NATO plans to deploy on their territory is too small and symbolic to deter an attack by Russia, whose 2014 annexation of Crimea is fresh in the memories of the former Soviet-bloc states.

They will this week press other ministers of the western military alliance to help them build an air defense system against Russian aircraft and missiles. But that would be a highly sensitive step, likely to be condemned by Moscow as yet more evidence of a NATO strategy threatening its borders.

Asked about the likelihood of Russian aggression in the Baltics, Lithuania’s Defense Minister Juozas Olekas told Reuters: “We cannot exclude it … They might exercise on the borders and then switch to invasion in hours.”

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia see themselves on the front line in any potential conflict with Moscow and say they are putting their armies on a war footing, meaning they can be mobilized almost immediately.

NATO defense ministers are set to agree this week on a new multinational force of 4,000 troops for the Baltics and Poland.

The United States, Germany and Britain are set to lead battalions of about 1,000 troops each. Canada may lead a fourth.

While the Baltic nations welcome the deployments, they say the build-up must go further – pointing to Russia’s efforts to develop an “anti-access” capability in the Kaliningrad exclave bordering Lithuania and Poland, using missiles and submarines to stop NATO moving reinforcements into the Baltics.

The Baltics want NATO fighters to protect their skies and are seeking medium-range missile interceptors from Norway’s Kongsberg Gruppen <KOG.OL> and U.S. defense contractor Raytheon <RTN.N>.

“We need to stop possible air aggression,” said Olekas. “We are discussing creating a regional medium-range air defense system together with the Latvians, the Estonians and the Poles.”

Olekas expects to raise the matter with NATO colleagues at the ministers’ meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels.

CREDIBILITY

The head of the Estonian defense force Lieutenant General Riho Terras said: “The first and foremost is the defense of our airspace. Air defense is the challenge that needs to solved together with the NATO alliance.”

“We are not talking about defense of Lithuania, we are talking about the credibility of the whole alliance,” said Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius.

But such calls would require stretched NATO governments to beef up the so-called air policing mission that regularly intercepts Russian jets flying over international waters close to the Baltic states.

The Baltic nations rely on their NATO allies’ quick reaction aircraft to patrol their skies, with no mandate to confront hostile aircraft in a conflict.

Four British Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets and four Portuguese F-16 fighter jets are currently carrying out the air policing mission. Officials say a lot more would be needed for air defense.

And southern NATO nations, focused on uncontrolled migrant flows and the failing states on Europe’s borders, may also be unwilling to grant more resources to the eastern flank.

Ben Hodges, the commander of the U.S. army in Europe, visited Vilnius last week. He echoed Baltic concerns about the strength of NATO’s deterrence.

“It is a transition,” Hodges said. “I hope that includes serious war fighting capabilities. Just putting garrisons of troops sitting in the countries … will not deter.”

Russia insists it poses no threat to the former Soviet states. Top NATO officials say talk of an impending attack is misleading, a view shared by Paris and Berlin.

Russia has held unannounced exercises on the borders of the Baltics, including one in 2014 which mustered 100,000 troops, according to Danish Colonel Jakob Sogard Larsen, who heads the new NATO command outpost in Lithuania.

“You see it differently when you live here,” Larsen said.

“We need to learn to fight total war again,” he said, in a sign of the return of a Cold War-style mood.

Lithuanian officials accuse Russia of trying to buy off Lithuanian soldiers and business people to become spies for the Kremlin, intimidating diplomats and spreading disinformation on the Internet and television.

Prosecutors are preparing to file criminal charges against someone they say is a high-ranking Russian intelligence officer arrested last year trying to recruit informants.

Russia denies any such activities.

SWITCH TO “CLASSIC WARFARE”

The NATO battalions are part of a deterrent to be approved by leaders at a summit in Warsaw in July. That will involve forces on rotation, warehoused equipment and a “spearhead” force backed by NATO’s 40,000-strong rapid reaction force.

Once the decision is made, Germany could deploy to Lithuania before September. Britain is expected to deploy to Estonia, the United States to Latvia and Canada possibly to Poland.

German and Danish soldiers fanned out across swamps and woodland in Lithuania this week in war games to learn the unfamiliar Baltic terrain and test their ability to move equipment and personnel quickly to a possible front.

Their tanks and armored vehicles were recently brought back from Afghanistan, desert-yellow camouflage painted over with the green-and-black colors of Baltic woodlands.

“We are changing our focus from counter-insurgency tactics back to classic warfare,” said German Lieutenant Colonel Marc-Ulrich Cropp from his camouflaged command tent at a Lithuanian military base. “Everyone has to be prepared.”

(Additional reporting by David Mardiste in Tallin and Sabine Siebold in Berlin; editing by Andrew Roche)

U.S. may turn to Canada for help with new NATO force

NATO flag flies at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels during a NATO ambassadors meeting o

By Robin Emmott and Wiktor Szary

BRUSSELS/WARSAW (Reuters) – The United States could turn to Canada to help it establish a new NATO force in eastern Europe as a deterrent against Russia because it is struggling to win support from its European allies, diplomats say.

Despite its show of force with a military exercise across eastern Europe this month that involved more than 20 NATO and partner countries, the alliance is moving slowly in its efforts to build a rotating force of 4,000 troops on its eastern flank in Poland and the Baltics.

Only Britain and Germany have said they are willing to contribute, by providing a battalion of about 1,000 troops each. The United States will provide a third battalion, leaving NATO requiring one more country to provide a fourth.

“European allies have reasons why they can’t come forward. They’re thinly stretched, at home, in Africa, in Afghanistan. They just don’t have the money,” said a senior NATO diplomat involved in the discussions.

The reluctance of some European governments to help the military build-up, the biggest since the end of the Cold War, reflects internal doubts over whether the alliance should be more focused on combating militant groups and uncontrolled flows of migrants, mainly from the Middle East and North Africa.

“There are divisions within NATO,” said Sophia Besch, a European defense expert at the London-based Centre for European Reform think tank. “Some allies feel the focus should be on the south.”

Unity is crucial for NATO as Moscow and Washington accuse one another of intimidation close to the NATO-Russia border. NATO and Russia feel threatened by each other’s large military drills and are at odds over the crisis in Ukraine.

Any sense in the United States that Europe is unwilling to pay for its own defense could be damaging. U.S. President Barack Obama has suggested European powers were “free riders” during the 2011 Libya air campaign, and U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused them of not paying their fair share.

A senior Polish diplomatic source familiar with the negotiations said NATO would not allow the build-up to fail as it had already been announced, and because Russia might exploit it as a sign that NATO is unwilling to defend Poland.

“The summit in Warsaw will be President Obama’s last (NATO summit) and the U.S. wants it to be a success. It will ensure that the fourth framework country is found, possibly by leaning on Canada,” the source said. “Washington will bend over backwards here.”

“PERSISTENT” PRESENCE

Former communist states in NATO want to bolster its eastern defenses without stationing large forces permanently, worried since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine that Moscow could invade Poland or the Baltic states in days.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed such an idea this week, saying he saw no threats in the region that would justify the area’s militarization.

Russia has also said the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s large-scale military exercise in eastern Europe undermines trust and security, and that it is concerned by the movement of NATO’s military infrastructure towards its border.

NATO defense ministers will next week formally agree on the plan for four battalions to be involved in the new force, part of a deterrent made up of forces on rotation and warehoused equipment ready for a rapid response force in case of attack.

That force includes air, maritime and special operations units of up to 40,000 personnel.

While saying they seek to avoid a return to the Cold War, when 300,000 U.S. service personnel were stationed in Europe, NATO generals describe it as a “persistent” but not a “permanent” presence to avoid breaking a 1997 agreement with Moscow limiting the deployment of combat forces.

Britain is likely to deploy to Estonia, Germany to Lithuania and the United States to Latvia. The United States will also supply an armored brigade to rove around the eastern flank. Only Poland appears to be left out at this stage.

While the United States is increasing its military spending in Europe to $3.4 billion in 2017, defense cuts in Italy, Belgium and France during the euro zone debt crisis complicate military planning.

France says it is focused on fighting militants in Syria and Mali, while there are also tensions with Poland’s new right-wing government, which is seeking to rescind on a $3 billion helicopter tender with Airbus <AIR.PA>, diplomats say. Airbus was provisionally selected by the previous administration.

Spain is leading NATO’s special “spearhead” force that can deploy in less than a week. Smaller countries such as Denmark say they do not have the resources to deploy a battalion.

Italy, a major buyer of gas from Russia — on which the European Union depends heavily for energy supplies — is wary of taking a tough line on Moscow.

Rome is also upset with central and eastern European states for not showing more willingness to take refugees fleeing North Africa across the Mediterranean and into Italy.

That leaves Canada, which has 220 armed forces personnel in Poland.

“Canada is actively considering options to effectively contribute to NATO’s strengthened defense and deterrence posture,” said a spokesperson for the Canadian Department of National Defence.

Polish Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz told reporters in Warsaw on Thursday he expected any problems with the NATO plan to be “resolved in a positive manner.”

(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Berlin and Pawel Sobczak in Warsaw, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

NATO likely to designate cyber as operational domain of war

A NATO flag flies at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels during a NATO ambassadors meeting on the situation in Ukraine and the Crimea region

BERLIN (Reuters) – NATO members will likely agree during a summit meeting in Warsaw next month to designate cyber as an official operational domain of warfare, along with air, sea, land and space, a senior German defense ministry official said Wednesday.

Major General Ludwig Leinhos, who heads the German military’s effort to build up a separate cyber command, told a conference at the Berlin air show that he expected all 28 NATO members to agree to the change during the coming Warsaw summit.

Leinhos, who previously held a senior job at NATO headquarters, said he also expected NATO members to agree to intensify their efforts in the cyber security arena.

The United States announced in 2011 that it viewed cyberspace as an operational domain of war, and said it would respond to hostile attacks in cyberspace as it would to any other threat.

Evert Dudok, a senior official with Europe’s largest aerospace company Airbus Group SE, called for adoption of Europe-wide or global standards in the cyber arena.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal)

NATO may rely on five battalions to deter Russia, Britain says

Soldiers from the NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo march outside their camp close to the town of Vushtri, in northern Kosovo,

By Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO’s build-up in eastern Europe could include up to 3,500 troops, Britain said on Friday, stressing that the planned deployments would not be aggressive toward Russia.

Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 has prompted the Western military alliance to consider deterrent forces in the Baltics and Poland which British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said would be a “trip wire” to alert NATO of any potential threat.

NATO defense ministers are expected to decide on the troop levels next month, while making clear no large forces will be stationed permanently, to avoid provoking the Kremlin.

“It looks like there could be four, maybe five battalions … the point of these formations is to act as a trip wire,” Hammond told reporters.

“It isn’t intended to be aggressive,” he said following a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.

Hammond said that could amount to as many as 3,500 troops along NATO’s border with Russia, with Britain, Germany and the United States taking the bulk of command duties.

In total, the deterrent will be made up of small eastern outposts, forces on rotation, regular war games and warehoused equipment ready for a rapid response force which would include air, maritime and special operations units.

NATO diplomats say the United States is likely to command two battalions, with Britain and Germany taking another each. That leaves a fifth NATO nation to come forward to lead the remaining battalion, with Denmark, Spain, Italy or the Netherlands seen as possible candidates, diplomats say.

The force build-up follows a speech by U.S. President Barack Obama in Estonia in 2014 in which he said NATO would help ensure the independence of the three Baltic states, which for decades were part of the Soviet Union.

NATO foreign ministers said they had agreed to propose to Moscow another meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, which met in April for the first time in nearly two years, to set out what the alliance says is a proportionate response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

NATO suspended all practical cooperation with Russia in April 2014 in protest over Crimea. NATO said high-level political contacts with Russia could continue but NATO and Russian ambassadors have met only three times since.

“We are doing things that could be misinterpreted,” Hammond said. “We judged that creating an opportunity through the NATO-Russia Council is the best way of avoiding Russia being able to say: ‘we haven’t been informed, we didn’t know the details.'”

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; editing by Andrew Roche)

Russia will act to neutralize U.S. Missile shield threat

A view shows the command center for the newly opened ballistic missile defense site at Deveselu air base

By Vladimir Soldatkin

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) – A ballistic missile defense shield which the United States has activated in Europe is a step to a new arms race, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, vowing to adjust budget spending to neutralize “emerging threats” to Russia.

The United States switched on the $800 million missile shield at a Soviet-era base in Romania on Thursday saying it was a defense against missiles from Iran and so-called rogue states.

But, speaking to top defense and military industry officials, Putin said the system was aimed at blunting Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

“This is not a defense system. This is part of U.S. nuclear strategic potential brought onto a periphery. In this case, Eastern Europe is such periphery,” Putin said.

“Until now, those taking such decisions have lived in calm, fairly well-off and in safety. Now, as these elements of ballistic missile defense are deployed, we are forced to think how to neutralize emerging threats to the Russian Federation,” he said.

Coupled with deployment in the Mediterranean of U.S. ships carrying Aegis missiles and other missile shield elements in Poland, the site in Romania was “yet another step to rock international security and start a new arms race”, he said.

Russia would not be drawn into this race. But it would continue re-arming its army and navy and spend the approved funds in a way that would “uphold the current strategic balance of forces”, he said.

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said on Thursday that the shield would not be used against any future Russian missile threat.

Frank Rose, deputy U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control, warned at the time that Iran’s ballistic missiles could hit parts of Europe, including Romania.

Putin said the prospect of a nuclear threat from Iran should no longer be taken seriously and was being used by Washington as an excuse to develop its missile shield in Europe.

The full defensive umbrella, when complete in 2018 after further development in Poland, will stretch from Greenland to the Azores.

It relies on radars to detect a ballistic missile launch into space. Sensors then measure the rocket’s trajectory and destroy it in space before it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere. The interceptors can be fired from ships or ground sites.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Lidia Kelly and Richard Balmforth)