Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

Poland will once again come under its sphere of influence.”
32
In January 2008, the leaders of Ukraine’s new pro-
Western coalition government—Prime Minister Yulia
Tymoshenko, President Viktor Yushchenko, and
Parliament Chairman Arseny Yatsenyuk—submitted
a joint letter to NATO Secretary General Jaap de
Hoop Scheffer, declaring Ukraine’s readiness to accept
a Membership Action Plan (MAP) for NATO. 33
Russian leaders quickly underscored their opposition
to Ukraine’s becoming yet another NATO member
on Russia’s borders. After meeting with Yushchenko
at the Kremlin on February 12, Putin warned that if
Ukraine were to join NATO and host U.S. missile defense
sites: “It’s horrible to say and even horrible to
think that, in response to the deployment of such facilities
in Ukrainian territory, which cannot theoretically
be ruled out, Russia could target its missile systems at
Ukraine.” 34
Russian nuclear threats against nearby states showing
an interest in hosting U.S. ballistic missile defense
(BMD) systems have become even more common in
recent years. Starting in 2006, senior Russian Government
officials, military officers, and policy analysts
offered an escalating range of complaints regarding
the planned deployment of U.S. BMD in former
Soviet bloc countries. They insisted that, whatever
their stated aim, the deployments really sought to intercept
Russia’s own decreasing ICBM arsenal. They
also claimed that, despite the small number of BMD
interceptors originally intended for deployment, the
United States aimed to establish many more missile
defense systems near Russia in coming years, accompanied
by additional military facilities close to Russia
using the pretext that they were needed to defend the
BMD systems.
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