(LifeSiteNews) — The haunting specter of nuclear war increases as both the U.S. and Russia refuse to rule out a first-strike policy.
The Daily Mail reported that President Joe Biden announced he will maintain America’s current nuclear policy, which allows for the U.S. to strike first with nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances,” based on Biden’s recent Nuclear Power Review.
According to The Guardian, in an interview Saturday, Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the country’s security council, said Moscow’s policy allows for the use of nuclear missiles even if an enemy has only used conventional weapons.
According to the Arms Control Association, Russia’s stockpile of 6,257 nuclear warheads exceeds that of any country in the world, compared with America’s 5,550 nuclear warheads.
On Saturday, Medvedev outlined Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which allows for Moscow to strike first. “We have a special document on nuclear deterrence,” Medvedev said. “This document clearly indicates the grounds on which the Russian Federation is entitled to use nuclear weapons. There are a few of them, let me remind them to you: Number one is the situation when Russia is struck by a nuclear missile. The second case is any use of other nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies.”
“The third is an attack on a critical infrastructure that will have paralyzed our nuclear deterrent forces. And the fourth case is when an act of aggression is committed against Russia and its allies, which jeopardized the existence of the country itself, even without the use of nuclear weapons, that is, with the use of conventional weapons.”
Medvedev also declared that Russia has a “determination to defend the independence, sovereignty of our country, not to give anyone a reason to doubt even the slightest that we are ready to give a worthy response to any infringement on our country, on its independence.”
Meanwhile, Julia Davis, a columnist for The Daily Beast and a Russian media analyst, tweeted that “Deputy of the Moscow City Duma Sergei Savostyanov has proposed for Russia to expand its so-called ‘military operation’ and ‘denazify’ Poland, the Baltics, Moldova and Kazakhstan.”
Amid the open talk about the use of nuclear weapons, Sweden’s TV4 News reported today that two Russian fighter jets that violated Sweden’s airspace on March 2 were carrying nuclear weapons. The news was quickly picked up by other European news agencies. Swedish Minister of Defense Peter Hultqvist has not confirmed the jets that violated Swedish airspace were carrying nuclear weapons.
Russian Sukhoi 24 jets were accompanied by two Sukhoi 27 fighter escorts. They took off from Kaliningrad Air Force Base and violated Swedish airspace by flying over the island of Gotland.
The incident prompted Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson to state today that she no longer rules out Sweden’s membership in NATO.