Kremlin Backs Off from Nuclear Threat Against Sweden and Finland

April 15, 2022 (EIRNS)—Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov stepped back from the nuclear threat issued by Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev yesterday following the April 13 statements made by the prime ministers of Finland and Sweden in Stockholm. “I can say nothing in this regard, because only after a plan of our enhancement of the western borders is drafted. It will contain a number of measures and all necessary steps to be taken,” Peskov told journalists, reported TASS. “It will be considered at a separate presidential session, just like Putin said himself previously.”

Medvedev had said a few hours earlier that should Sweden and Finland join NATO, Russia would no longer adhere to the non-nuclear status of the Baltic region. (See “Finland and Sweden To Apply for NATO Membership, Maybe by June,” EIR Daily Alert for April 15, 2022.)

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko warned separately that should the two countries join the alliance, Russia will take military measures in response. “It is clear that our border with Finland is 1,300 km long. This will mean a radical change in the military and political situation and it is understandable that we will be forced to take security and defense measures that we will deem necessary,” he told TASS.

“In the current conditions, I am not ready to say whether this is real or not” referring to the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO, Grushko continued, replying to a corresponding question. “For decades, the neutral status of these states had ensured a very high level of their security and generally the security in that region that had been a region of peace and cooperation and, importantly, a very reliable platform for building good neighborly relations with us,” he said. Grushko further said that while Russia still maintains diplomatic contacts with both Finland and Sweden, they both “have joined the sanctions and are participating in the anti-Russia campaign unleashed in the West. This is today’s reality.”